The Basic Plot in Five Words or Less: Murder in Savannah, Georgia. Ooooooh.
My Basic Ramblings: (Note: I have not read the book yet. I am about #235 on the wait-list at the library.) Another sort of little Brush With Fame here - my grandparents (paternal) lived in Savannah, Georgia in the 80's (when the murder & subsequent trials took place). However, they didn't really live in the city itself, but in a nice little retirement village nearby with a creek in back that had alligators in it. When we went to visit them, we didn't really go into the city. I asked my mom (after seeing the movie) if my grandparents'd gone to the trial, but she said they hadn't, they'd just read the papers.
Although (as I said before) the Jim Williams case occurred back in 1981 or so, the movie has kind of a 90's feel to it. No one (except for Alison Eastwood as the Southern Belle John Cusack Falls For) wears anything resembling early 80's clothes. Where're the skinny ties and remnants of leisure suits?
Kevin Spacey, of course, is a god, even though he has a mustache in the film. I don't like mustaches. John Cusack is cool, Jude Law (the redneck who gets killed) is cute in a redneck-who-gets-killed kinda way, The Lady Chablis is hysterical, Irma P. Hall does nothing but chuckle knowingly the entire film, and the scenery is just fantastic.
Despite all this, the movie really drags in some points. The courtroom scenes, for instance. Get on with it, already! I felt like yelling at the screen. It made the movie seem like a courtroom drama, and if I want to see a courtroom drama, I'll go see one of those John Grisham flicks. And since I've never seen one of those John Grisham flicks, I DON'T WANT TO SEE COURTROOM DRAMAS! (Sorry.)
And the statue. What's up with the statue? Some statue of a girl holding two really big ashtrays. (At least that's what my mother thought they were, but she's trying to quit smoking and was a little cigarette-obsessed at the time.) Maybe in the book it has some deeper significance, but to me it was just a statue of a girl holding two really big ashtrays.
Was the explanation of the book's title as hokey in the book as it was in the movie? "Okay, we're in this cemetary, and before midnight it's good, and after midnight it's evil." And wouldn't the time after midnight be "good", theoretically, since it's the beginning of a new day and all its joyous promises?
Now, of course, I'll have to read the book.