(1999)
2
Michael Hastings
After a potentially promising setup, this Ashley Judd vehicle shifts promptly into Fugitive mode, replete with foot chases, car crashes, and ferry-boat escapes -- sometimes all in the same scene. Double Jeopardy flirts with a number of enticing genres in its first 20 minutes: slasher film, courtroom potboiler, women's prison flick. The fun ends, however, as soon as Judd settles into a court-mandated boarding house presided over by stern parole officer/father figure Travis (Tommy Lee Jones on autopilot). The subsequent action scenes have little to recommend them, though anyone not familiar with the aforementioned Fugitive or its offspring (Chain Reaction, The Firm, et al.) may find a couple of the set pieces worthy of biting a nail or two. The script's titular conceit -- since our heroine can't be tried on the same crime twice, then she might as well kill the person she was convicted of murdering -- will be particularly laughable to viewers with a shred of legal aptitude.
Double Jeopardy on AllMovie
Double Jeopardy (1999)
