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The Appeal - By John Grisham

Title

Grisham's legal thriller offers a warning, but little depth.

Review

The story behind The Appeal involves a multimillion dollar lawsuit against a blue-chip chemical firm who has been accused of knowingly dumping hazardous waste, thus causing numerous cancer-related deaths. The story begins at the end of this lawsuit, where the trial has just been lost. With the trial lost they attempt to subvert the upcoming appeal in their favour. 

What is initially apparent is that Grisham chooses to focus on the plot rather than the characters - with great detriment. They have no depth whatsoever, and any characterisation is based on every cliché in the book - the evil corporation magnate, his vapid, spoilt wife, shadowy governmental fixers and corrupt senators - with little sign of any attempt to flesh out these stereotypes.

Now, thinking about this I wondered if is purely because of the format of this story. After all, Grisham wants to talk about the US legal system, not bog himself down with weighty characters who will dilute his message. If you choose to put this aside, and accept the novel on its merits and for what it is, what you ultimately end up with is a very downbeat piece of work, and as much as you feel Grisham would want this to be an allegory of sorts, where those who are evil have righteous justice served and the good are rewarded, instead he reflects a legal world which is as easily infiltrated and corrupted by those with power as every other medium. 

Despite this, and with the novel's interesting ending (to go into any more detail would be a disservice to those who have not read it), and a rushed sense of incompleteness, I can't help but think Grisham has finished with this story. And yet I can't think of this as a story, more as a stark warning - you feel Grisham is speaking from a heightened perspective. This work may be fiction, but you sense there is more than an element of truth within its pages.

Darko Director attempts Kubrickian madness and comes up short

Donnie Darko is a great film, with one caveat. It has no resolution. There is no deeper meaning, no hidden context within its narrative. It makes little sense for no other reason that writer and director Richard Kelly chose obscurity over truth, narrative over reality. 

Kelly himself has admitted there are 'no answers' to the questions viewers inevitable prompt once the final credits in Donnie Darko rolls. Therefore it is hard to watch Darko again without the nagging voice in your head complaining that those logical gaps you see are nothing but frustrating logical gaps. Where Richard Kelly succeeded with Darko is that the story is compelling and weird enough to forgive his sleight of hand.

Southland Tales is exactly like this but Kelly fails to reproduce the little world charm and mysterious and subtle direction of his directorial debut. Instead we have a retrospective Apocalypse re-played out over a veritable smorgasbord of misfits, porn stars, people who are clones of themself, a musical interlude, perpetual motion and a nuclear holocaust, all crammed into a frustrating first half hour where all elements are thrown onto the screen in a vague hope that something will stick. It's maddeningly incoherent - as though Kelly saw a three year throwing paint onto a sheet of paper and thought he could replicate the sentiment on-screen.

Kelly's template appears to be Dr. Strangelove - forgetting that in its element Kubrick's masterpiece was chaotic within its simplicity. Southland Tales opts for complexity and hopes somewhere along the line the message will reveal itself to the audience. The problem is that the audience will have switched off long before this happens.