Reviews Film / High Crimes

The Highest Crime

They say that the greatest criminal is a bad storyteller, taking your time for nothing in return. This movie manages to avoid this by giving you a headache in the process. For those of you wondering if this movie will be entertaining, I advise you not to watch it, as the only value to be gained from this film is how to not write a schlock thriller.

The film begins with our two main characters, Clair and Tom Kubik, introducing them as a successful criminal lawyer and woodworker, respectively, while also revealing that Clair is pregnant. We are then introduced to the worst government tails in US history who proceed to knock a lamp over, alerting Tom to the fact that they are in his house, and instead of exiting the house in a quiet manner to avoid detection, they throw a chair through a window and dash out of it in full sight of Tom. It only gets worse from here. After some Christmas shopping, they are ambushed by the FBI and what appears to be the entire precinct dressed in SWAT gear, with the revelation that he has been arrested for the murder of nine civilians in a small village a ways from El Salvador in response to a terrorist killing three American college students at a cafe in El Salvador, which he is claimed to have committed during his secret military career. This sets the premise where Clair has to prove her husbands innocence while the story reveals evidence that evenly supports both the innocent and guilty interpretations with a healthy amount of evidence that goes both ways. In theory. However, High Crimes completely and utterly fails to achieve this, steeping a ludicrous amount of evidence for Tom’s innocence with only a single clue, never made light by any except ONE of the characters, to the contrary. And we’ll get to that chestnut in a moment.

Knowing that she’s out of her depth when it comes to military court proceedings, and with the assigned lawyer Terence Embry being incompetent, Clair hires Charles Grimes, a former military lawyer, to assist her in the proceedings. Charles proceeds to pull a single “Gotcha” moment in court regarding three of the five witnesses going missing, and proceeds to do nothing except fall off the wagon, then comment on Clair’s decisions and court proceedings for the rest of the film, only taking an active role at the very tail-end of the film. They somehow managed to waste Gordon Freeman, despite plastering his name and face across the promotional material.

Tom then claims that Hernandez, a member of his platoon, is the true culprit, who then proceeds to walk into the room Tom is being held in and proceeds to taunt him into a fistfight in the most unsubtle introduction of a suspect in the history of cinema. After having a chat with Bill Marks, the man overseeing the case, Clair discovers that not only is Hernandez not being held accountable, Marks is unlawfully detaining Tom. Tom then takes a polygraph test that comes up clean. In order to throw doubt on the results of the test, the writers take the previous unsubtle example and proceed to hammer it to death with a semitrailer, by having a man approach Clair while she’s shopping like he’s about to ask her if she needs a timepiece from under his trench coat and tells her that he’s a CIA trainer who teaches people to fake polygraph techniques, nudge nudge!! Wink wink!!! Then a man from the village proceeds to break into Clair’s house, knock her into semi-unconsciousness with a pistol whip, then proceeds to tell her that her husband did it all, as well as the fact the bombing of the cafe was actually the US’ military’s fault as the terrorist was actually at the cafe at the time and that the trip to the village by Tom’s platoon was just a cover-up. He then proceeds to never show up again until the very end. Definitely nothing suspicious about that. The only confirmation Clair gets was that Hernandez got a cut On a side note, he’s constantly referred to as the El Salvadorian, despite the fact that HE ISNT FROM EL SALVADOR.

After the story contrives Charles to start drinking again, he discovers that Embry has been drinking with the prosecutor, adding to the implication that he was a plant designed to rig a kangaroo court. Clair promptly kicks him off the defence, and he loses all relevance from the plot, except for dating Clair’s sister, who is also irrelevant.

In court again, one of the two surviving witnesses claims that Hernandez was the one behind the shooting, but of course Marks uses his corruption to hold back his inditement. Eventually, Clair uses her incredibly shoddy evidence, that being Hernandez’ medical records and the random Mexican home invader’s testimony, to blackmail him into dropping the case.

Now then, let’s tally up the evidence, shall we? On the innocence interpretation: Unjust detainment Government cover-up Abuse of powers and Corruption Potential conspiracy with the defence Attempting to sway the defence, and ONLY the defence, by putting personal scrutiny over the evidence behind the court’s back, despite the people overseeing the courts putting it in action A direct witness pointing the finger at the other suspect And aiding and abetting a suspect

On the neutral interpretation: A random Mexican breaks into Clair’s house and provides testimony outside the court

And now, after all’s said and done, they go on a vacation after his acquittal, where Clair goes over the files one more time, only to see the testimony of a widow of one of the three dead witnesses, which, need I remind you, were supposed to have died mysteriously, meaning this is a fucking straight-up Deus Ex Machina retcon. She then discovers that the killer tossed the gun between his hands. That’s right, the ONE FUCKING CLUE, the one the audience was supposed to pick up on, was not only made light of by a shitty retcon, but was a STUPID FUCKING TIC that is only shown in flashbacks and with Tom’s car keys and the revolver he keeps for home defence at the start of the film. One tic that could be held by ANY NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN AMERICA, against blatant corruption, conspiracy, persuasion of the defence council to invoke conflict of interest, lies and slander. Schrodingers’s Gun does not begin to describe the utter fucking bullshit of this twist. Shrodinger’s Gun implies that the case could be bent around a single clue, when not only is that clue ENTIRELY FUCKING COUNTERFACTUAL, but the entirety of the case POINTS IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. Then Tom turns into a painfully generic villain out of nowhere and ties her up with nothing but phone cord after a ruffle that causes her to miscarry. How convenient! It’s almost as if the pregnancy was a contrived and shoddy way to heighten the drama, alongside the entire farce that was the rest of the film! Then the El Salvadorian, misnomer as he ever is, shows up to deliver the TRUE Deus Ex Machina by not only knowing where they went on vacation after the acquittal, but knowing EXACTLY WHERE THEY WERE STAYING and showing up at the EXACT TIME necessary to save Clair, before promptly vanishing again. The movie ends with Charles and Clair starting up their own law firm.

To put it simply, this movie is a farce of the highest order, granting the audience a joke of a case, rife with all manner of laughable, overbearing corruption, firmly planting itself in the innocent camp, only to pull out an Ass Pull of a final unreveal to bait the audience into believing they were masterfully misled into believing his innocence, rounding it off with a back-to-back Deus Ex Machina that destroys whatever infinitesimal “drama” the film still possessed. As such, this film goes into the shelf with all the other nonsensical thrillers that are now more oft mocked than the 80’s action films, only to ever be brought out as an example of what not to do when writing one.