The Chamber

Plenty of talent has been gathered for the adaptation of John Grisham's novel The Chamber, but I never became involved in the story and ended up sitting there dozing. That was perhaps mostly because I found it hard to identify with the film's characters, which is rather important in a traditional drama.

Chris O'Donnell plays the young lawyer Adam Hall, who for inscrutable reasons returns to the land of his fathers to defend his own grandfather, Sam Cayhall, who has long been waiting for his death sentence to be carried out. Cayhall was convicted of planting a bomb in 1967 that killed a Jewish lawyer and his two small children. Hall, however, questions whether Cayhall really acted alone. The grandfather, who is seeing his grandson for the first time, is not very cooperative, though. In fact I did not understand why Adam Hall did not simply let his grandfather stew in his own juice, seeing that he is such an incorrigible racist and grouch, but no. Nor does one understand how Sam Cayhall can suddenly do a complete U-turn and show remorse. That is the film's absolute weakness.

Adam does not manage to save his grandfather, and the evidence he digs up of a larger conspiracy is something Governor McCallister clearly intends to exploit for his own benefit. It is a surprisingly depressing ending. It is also somewhat dispiriting that the film does not dare to take a stand on the issue of the death penalty, even though this is fairly central to the story.