You Should Have Listened To What Mama Said-Samuel L. Jackson’s Reasonable Doubt

DVD Review  

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Reasonable Doubt, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Dominic Cooper, 2014

When I said in the title of this review the film, Reasonable Doubt, you should have listened to what Mama said I mean that literally, well, literally about the advice part anyway although the Mama part is maybe a stretch since it is the mother of up and coming New York City Assistant DA Mitch’s (played by Dominic Cooper) child who gave the advice, and good advice too. See Mitch was out on the town in the City with some co-workers and as will happen he had too much to drink and had told that mother of his infant child, wife, Rachel (played by Erin Karpluk) if that happened he would take a cab home. Well there would not be much of a story if he did as he promised but you know without me telling he did not. As a result of his impaired condition (nice way to put it, right), the time of night, and the icy conditions of the roads he was involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident of some poor guy. And in a serious error of judgment he left the guy there after calling for assistance. The hit-and-run part was to cover up that he, an up and coming Assistant DA and wife promiser would be in deep trouble if his action had been exposed. While this action on Mitch’s part gave him a few sleepless nights and whatever guilt he could muster up he nevertheless figured that he could ride it out, ride it out especially when it turned out the guy he ran over was a low-life criminal. Except, low-life criminal or not, when the New York cops intensely investigated the case they came up with a ton of evidence of the guy who they thought was the real killer, a working class black guy Clinton (played by Samuel L. Jackson), ready made by the circumstances to take the fall. That arrest and murder one rap Clinton faced really sent Mitch up the wall because no way could he let Clinton take the fall, take a big step-off at Sing-Sing for his blunder. So up and coming Assistant DA Mitch fudged the case, fudged it so bad police eyes were watching him, skewed the evidence in such a way that Clinton got off and went his rightfully merry way. End of story.                 

Well not quite end of story otherwise this would have been an exceptionally short film despite the hard truth cautionary note, the hard lesson Mitch had to learn. So the story-line had to be “spiced up” a bit and what better way to do that than introduce a serial killer into the plot, a serial killer who actually did kill that low-life Mitch ran over. A serial killer whose wife and child were murdered before his eyes while he was helpless to do anything about it and setoff something evil inside him. So he had taken to avenge his emptiness as he called it on all the low-life recent parolees in the city who were clustered in various support groups for easy pickings it seemed like since the killer spent his off-hours as a volunteer as these meetings.

And guess who our serial killer turned out to be. Yeah, old Clinton who was if evil a pretty crafty fellow because he set up Mitch to take a few falls, once Mitch got wise to what Clinton had done, and what had driven him to those killing fields. Needless to say Samuel L. Jackson who can play a range of roles convincingly from blasé hipster to badass gangster is very scary as the serial killer here. But this one left me wondering a more general thought. Maybe I am off on this but between books and movies there have to be many more fictional serial killers that in the real population otherwise we should all lock our doors and stay inside, permanently. Strangely it is only the addition of the serial killer angle that made the story-line on this one the least bit interesting. Go figure.