Was inspired to revisit this one, after voting in the special election yesterday to fill my district's House seat...
As others have said, this is a solid '90s neo-noir. It's shot in a mostly functional, competent style, nothing too flashy. There are very few shots that call attention to themselves in the way that some of Frost's shots in Episode 7 of
Twin Peaks do (I'm thinking of the "bite the bullet" scene, the roulette-wheel-to-eye transition, the antlers behind Hank, etc.). The book the film is based on is set in Australia, I believe. I can't even find a synopsis of the book online, so it seems pretty obscure, but it's titled
Juryman and was cowritten by an Australian defense attorney and an Australian journalist (both of whom are famous enough to have their own Wikipedia entries). The writer on the film before Frost was hired, Lee Reynolds, switched the location to New Orleans. When Frost came on board, he was happy with the setting and decided to play it up more, because he had directed the first episode of the Lynch/Frost docuseries
American Chronicles which covered Mardi Gras, so he felt he had gotten to know the city well and was excited by its darker side. The cinematography (by Ron Garcia) and production design (by Richard Hoover) are also for the most part tasteful and not too attention-grabbing, aside from a few sets and lighting setups that are very '90s (I'm thinking particularly of the club where Cray and Lee meet up, as well as the
aikido studio).
BTW, "Storyville" was the name for New Orleans's red light district (i.e., legally sanctioned/regulated prostitution) from 1897 to 1917, named after city alderman Sidney Story, who drafted the legislation that led to the district being created. Prostitution was made illegal during WWI when troops were stationed in the area, and the federal government didn’t want them to be distracted, and "Storyville" was shut down. Louis Armstrong grew up in Storyville (and his recording of "When It's Sleepytime Down South" plays over the end credits of the film). In the film, Storyville is the name of the aforementioned night club which, as far as I can tell, is fictional (and looks tacky as hell).
James Spader as congressional hopeful Cray Fowler carries the movie on his shoulders and is in nearly every scene. He's likable, charismatic, boyish...a bit of a Southern JFK, which Frost has said was intentional. The very faint trace of a Louisiana accent Spader gives to his dialogue is nice and subtle. Others go bigger with their accents: the great Jason Robards and frequent Frost crony Charlie Haid (Renko from
Hill Street Blues, here playing a hilariously rambunctious pornographer) both go for broke, as does Michael Parks (doing a Cajun dialect distinct from but just as delightfully broad as his Quebecois Jean Renault accent).
Frost gets really solid performances from almost everyone, although the two main ladies are unfortunately the weak links. Joanne Whalley is fine but not particularly memorable, and her accent is rather grating...it comes off as a British movie actor's idea of a generic Southern accent. Charlotte Lewis is very attractive, but just isn't given much to do...and I don't buy her as a Vietnamese character.
Robards naturally steals every scene he's in as Cray's crass, colorfully amoral uncle Clifford, with just the right amount of scenery-chewing (except for one or two lines in his final scene, where I felt that Frost chose takes that were just a BIT too big). Frost clearly particularly enjoyed writing for this character, and Robards delivers delightful dialogue that nonetheless doesn't roll easily off the tongue and could have fallen very flat in the wrong actor's hands. Witness: "I'll lay even money that the ten o'clock news could find our boy in bed cross-eyed with a troop of circus midgets and a green monkey that's under indictment, and come election day, his margin of victory wouldn't dip any lower than tits on a giraffe."
Also in Cray's entourage is Pudge Herman, played by the late Chuck McCann. McCann, a friend of Frost's, was a successful puppeteer on regional NY children's television throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, then transitioned into animation voiceover work (including playing two of the Beagle Boys on the 1980s
DuckTales cartoon). He put in a rare, and great, dramatic turn as a mentally challenged mute in 1968's
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter opposite Alan Arkin. Lynch/Frost fans may remember him best as the puppeteer in the "Mr. Peanuts" episode of
On the Air. Although he doesn't get a lot to do in this film, McCann has a couple of memorable scenes where he chats with Cray on a dock and on a staircase, and conveys a lot of melancholy in a little screentime.
Piper Laurie, as Cray's mother (who seems to have some sort of unspecified mental degeneration going on), is naturally wonderful, and leaves one wishing that she had a bigger role. She's only in a few scenes, but elevates every single one, playing the character with great poignancy (and a great accent). Her final scene, near the end of the film, is especially moving.
Frost not only has Renko from
Hill Street in the film, but he also gets Renko's partner Hill -- Michael Warren, who plays the role of Nathan LaFleur. (Frost has mentioned Renko and Hill as among his favorite characters to write on
Hill Street.) I'll admit, although I've seen this film several times over the years, I have no idea who LaFleur is exactly, but he's evidently some sort of important local community leader (particularly in the black community) whose support Cray needs in order to get elected. In any event, Warren plays LaFleur with gravitas and nobility...although it turns out that maybe he's not quite as noble as he first appears. More on that below.
Other notable performances in the film include a late-career Woody Strode as a nearly blind man, Galyn Görg (
Peaks's Nancy O'Reilly) as a prostitute (talk about type casting!), and Chino "Fats" Williams in a small but delightfully hilarious role as the barker at a strip club.
Oh, and I've neglected to mention the best performance in the film! A bearded actor by the name of Mark Frost plays the indelible role of TV reporter Cyril Pons, seemingly having temporarily relocated from Washington State to Louisiana...
Some more plot/spoilery stuff below...
The idea of a politician's career being threatened by a sex tape was, I suppose, fairly prescient circa 1992, but it feels positively quaint in this post-"Grab 'em by the pussy" era. Would anyone even care today if there was a video disseminated of a congressional candidate having sex with another consenting adult? I would hope that people would be more outraged that the candidate was taped without his consent and had his privacy violated.
I suppose the potential PR problem is mainly that Cray is still nominally married; although he claims at one point that they're "separated," and we see that he's moved into an apartment, he's still having her tailed by a private eye to find evidence of infidelity, and he's still buying her a car (and she says she'll need a phone in the car for after he's elected, implying that she thinks the marriage is still very much a long-term thing). The private eye plot point raises a sort of interesting question. We're supposed to be outraged on Cray's behalf (and rightfully so) that he was videotaped without his knowledge having sex. But he's essentially done the same thing, by sending a P.I. to photograph his wife having sex, to give him leverage to pay less in the divorce. Is it somehow less sleazy because he's being cheated on? Especially given how outraged he is to find out the videotape exists--he is PISSED--it seems at least a bit hypocritical that he just did essentially the same thing a couple of days earlier.
The fight between Cray and Xang (Lee's dad) ends kind of awkwardly. Xang seems perfectly fine as he knocks Cray into the wall, and then immediately after Cray loses consciousness, Xang just sort of...keels over for no reason? Then, when Cray regains consciousness, Xang has his throat slit (by the Michael Parks character, we later learn). So what causes him to initially pass out? I guess Cray has his hands (sort of) around Xang's throat for like a second before that final hit, but realistically, it looks like Cray is just grasping Xang by the shoulders. Not great stunt work / editing. Every time I watch that scene, I rewind it to see if I missed something.
There's a ridiculous headline that the camera focuses on: "Asian Woman Held in Fathers [sic] Death." This immediately reminded me of the famous Twin Peaks headline, "Asian Man Killed!!" I was a kid in the early 1990s, but I do not recall newspapers in that era ever having headlines that specified the races/ethnicities of people, let alone using the incredibly vague descriptor "Asian." Was there just some randomly racist prop house that was making these newspapers for films?
It's kind of odd that the film sort of temporarily transforms into a courtroom drama about an hour in. I'm assuming the book was perhaps more focused on the courtroom stuff (considering that it's titled Juryman and was cowritten by an attorney), and perhaps Frost grafted some of the surrounding political intrigue onto that framework? As I said, I haven't even been able to find a synopsis of the book, so I'm just guessing here.
So, putting on my lawyer hat for a minute, what really drives me crazy is the gross ethical violation of Cray representing Lee. He was there at the scene and fled, he removed the murder weapon from the scene. So he's now suppressing evidence and failing to disclose his personal involvement with both his client and the events of the case itself to the court. Plus, he's also obviously encouraging his client to lie on the stand to hide his involvement. And LaFleur--who has seemed to be a pretty decent guy and a great lawyer--decides to go along with this as co-counsel, because, as Cray tells him, "You're a practical man," and if Cray succeeds, LaFleur will have a congressman in his pocket. Again, it's not entirely clear to me who LaFleur is besides being a great defense attorney, or why he needs a congressman...but evidently, he decides this is worth "violating every known ethical standard," as LaFleur himself puts it. After this point in the film, I find it very difficult to root for Cray, and I'm not sure if that was Frost's intent.
There's another moment that confuses me, when Piper Laurie's character talks about her late husband building a house for a hummingbird just before he died. This seems to lead Cray to check out a workshop area, where he finds a phone number written on the wall by the phone that leads him to uncover the family scandal/coverup about the mineral rights. It feels a bit clunky that Cray attaches significance to this random line from his senile mother about a hummingbird house, and that it pays off and leads him to crack the case.
It's also ridiculous that Cray is able to show his witness the knife (that he stole from the crime scene) without laying any foundation, with no chain of custody (and without objection from prosecution or the judge!). There's other trial stuff I could complain about, but that was the craziest one, so I'll let the rest go. 
I'd said that there aren't too many showy shots in the movie, but the final wacky over-the-top courtroom shootout does have a couple, including my favorite: the judge whips out a gun, and shoots the Michael Parks character directly through his police badge!
As with so many of Frost's stories, the film eventually reveals itself as a story about privilege and class (and, in this case, race). To Cray's credit (despite his courtroom shenanigans), when he learns that his family's legacy was built on his poor cracker grandfather stealing mineral-rich land from black sharecroppers, he is dead-set on righting the wrong, no matter the cost to himself or his family.
