Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

"Just Cause" is a well-done thriller: assuredly directed (it was only Arne Glimcher's second film, but you'd never know it), with a strong sense of place (the American South), a top-notch cast (Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne are as commanding as ever; Ed Harris is perhaps a little over-the-top but genuinely disturbing), and one spectacular car stunt. But it is also predictable (the big twist is not that hard to guess if you have seen more than 5 thrillers of this type in your life), and conventional: it's another one in a long line of thrillers in which the women have no other function except to be imperiled by madmen. ** out of 4.

In rural Florida 1986, Bobby Earl (Blair Underwood) is arrested for the murder of a young white girl. Sheriff Tanny Brown (Laurence Fishburne) leads a group of brutal cops. Eight years later, Bobby is facing the electric chair. His mother pleads with law professor and anti-death penalty advocate Paul Armstrong (Sean Connery) to help. His wife (Kate Capshaw) pushes him to take on the case. Imprisoned serial killer Blair Sullivan (Ed Harris) claims to have committed the crime.The acting is way too broad especially Fishburne. Sean Connery is possibly the most subtle of the lot which says everything. The movie is so heavy-handed. It pushes so hard that it's obvious something is wrong with the narrative. The twists are not obvious but expected. The movie moves too slowly wading through the case like a swamp. I don't know why the cops tell Armstrong so many incriminating statements. The Sullivan confession has an explanation which makes a new trial unlikely. The movie just doesn't have any tension with so much overacting. This is also notable that a young Scarlett Johansson has a minor role.

Good movie until it spirals out of control at the end. I'm glad someone FINALLY showed NATIVE Floridians. Yes, we do live here (my family's been here for five generations) and there are plenty of us in inland Florida and the Panhandle. Despite what another poster said, most Floridians are from here and still Southern. So, I'm glad to find a movie that portrays we Floridians as we are. That and Ed Harris' character did it for me. Ed Harris truly did a superb job and I loved the mention of Florida State, but the ending was terrible and absurd and featured Laurence Fishburne's on screen daughter talking like a Northerner and letting a strange man (Connery) walk into her house. Anyways, the last 30 minutes was a complete waste of time, but I only really liked it because I'm a Floridian and was proud to see the scenery - even though the constant alligator was a nuisance and cliché.

My problem with Just Cause is this: I didn't get a clear understanding as to why Bobby Earl (Blair Underwood) becomes a cold-blooded child killer.Oh yes, Fishburne's character, Sheriff Brown, states that Bobby Earl is "bad," but Sheriff Brown never tells us why. He just has a "feeling." We do learn via dialogue, not action or backstory, that when Bobby Earl was a boy, he was taken from Newark and his drug-addicted mamma and sent to live with his Grandmother in Florida. Is the viewer supposed to surmise that Bobby Earl is bad because he lived in Newark with a drug-addicted mother? If we have to fill in the blanks, then the writer has done a poor job telling his story. Not all kids who live in Newark with drug-addicted parents grow up "bad." Then the other problem I had was when Bobby Earl reveals that he's been castrated. I thought men – like animals – become more docile without their nuts. Yet, after being castrated, Bobby Earl rapes (doesn't leave semen) and viciously fillets a young white girl.I'm no psych major, but Bobby Earl's actions just don't add up; maybe because the writer failed to give us an intelligent equation.