Perhaps not surprisingly, The Chamber is about the law, or more accurately, about the difficulties faced by one lawyer. Adam Hall's client, who happens also to be his grandfather, is counting the days on Death Row; convicted for the deaths of two little boys in a racially motivated bombing nearly thirty years before.

      Gene Hackman plays Sam Cayhall, a self proclaimed bigot and Klans man who admits to feeling no remorse for his crimes. Chris O'Donnell as Adam Hall, Sam's grandson, has come to redress the case in an effort to get a stay of execution. With implications of Ku Klux Klan involvement, the case has been politically sensitive from the beginning, having been successfully prosecuted by the state governor himself. The governor seeks, once again, to use the situation to his political advantage and be seen as putting the KKK in the past where they belong. And what Adam Hall really wants, is to find the reasons for his grandfather's actions, an explanation of his father's suicide, and to know that he is not condemned to inherit a horrifying family legacy of hate and racist brutality.

      The set up is grand. The story is laid out neatly from the start, but once presented, goes nowhere worth watching. We are treated to first hand accounts of Cayhall's brutality, and his son's suicide, and still we wonder why. Are we being invited to pity young Adam Hall? O'Donell's performance, as emotive as petrified wood, seems to suggest that he can't really believe he's working opposite someone as huge as Gene Hackman and that he might actually wet himself out of nervousness.

      Hackman does his best with creaking dialogue "Save me? You don't look like you could save a turkey from Thanksgiving.", and looks agonised in all the right places but, seems not to understand how it is we can sympathise with the character, as the film makers certainly intend. This is the greatest difficulty presented by The Chamber. We are required to accept that Sam Cayhall has come to feel remorse for his crime, and that there is, therefore, hope for his grandson, who now does not have to see his grandfather die an unrepentant murderer. Whatever your views of capital punishment, and the film vacillates about that one too, it can not generate in a viewer the notion that, .Gee, maybe the old guy wasn't so bad after all.'

      Solid film making, as always from James Foley, solid acting from Gene Hackman and Faye Dunaway (as Cayhall's daughter), the stolid but handsome presence of Chris O'Donnell and adequate cinematography, are undermined at every turn by a weak script. The way the film skims over topics without really biting to the meat, suggests that there might have been a longer film intended, but as the commandment says, 'Thou shalt not keep the popcorn machine idle for more than ninety minutes.'

      With other Grisham stories, The Rainmaker (American Zoetrope), coming to theatres late this year, and in production at the same time, The Runaway Jury (Warner Brothers), here's hoping Hollywood hasn't carried the bucket too often to a dry well.

William Goldman, who co-scripted, has many other scriptwriting credits including:

Maverick (1994)
Last Action Hero (1993)
Chaplin (1992)
The Princess Bride (1987)
Marathon Man (1976)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Richard McDonald, 1998