TRIAL BY JURY (1994)

I slogged through Trial By Jury, a goosebumpless thriller about a single, working, New York mother on jury duty who's under Mob pressure to acquit a crime biggie of murder charges, for an hour before drifting away from the ludicrous plot and cliched dialogue to amuse myself: Which of the hapless stars owns the most exotic urban accent? Is it Englishwoman Joanne Whalley-Kilmer as the pretty juror? Irishman Gabriel Byrne as the only DA in town who has never heard of jury tampering? Italo-Irish New Yorker Armand Assante as the dandified Mob boss? Nah. They're all beaten by Washington, D.C.- born William Hurt, who, as a bad cop on the Mob payroll, produces an unfathomable dialect that would peel the paint off any courtroom wall. As they've said in the juries I've sat on, you shouldn't know from this.

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