‘Trial by Jury’ (R)

"Trial by Jury" is hardly an exciting title for a film, but it is at least accurate. Writer-director Heywood Gould seems intent on exposing the common manipulations of both defenders and prosecutors through the story of a capital murder case involving a ruthless mobster named Rusty Pirone (Armand Assante). Gould also explores the dilemmas created by the jury system, but somewhere along the way he opts for a very weird denouement melding sexual obsession and vigilante empowerment.

The focus of all this energy is Valerie Alston (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer), a single mom called to jury duty in the case of Pirone, who is personally responsible for 11 murders but has proved to be, until now, a Teflon don.

The movie starts with a scene in which a snitch and four police guards are ruthlessly gunned down. In court, both prosecutors and defenders envision Alston, who is simply intent on doing her civic "duty," as an asset to their side. The bad guys ensure their view by threatening the life of her 7-year old son (Bryan Shilowich). The threats are delivered, frequently, by tarnished copper Tommy Vesey (William Hurt), but from the start he seems discomfortingly ambivalent and somehow pulled to Alston, as if she represents his lost honor.

For a while, "Trial by Jury" moves along like a standard television trial film, with a greater ambition evident in both casting and production values. But Gould and co-writer Jordan Katz go down another path entirely by making Alston a magnet, albeit an unwitting one, for all the men who are most dangerous to her. That includes the feral Pirone (who rapes her in a personal midnight warning), Vesey, and even DA Daniel Graham (Gabriel Byrne). Graham and Pirone share Brooklyn roots, and they both seek to use Alston to their benefit, no matter the consequences to her. Ultimately, things spin out of control, though not believably nor with any sense of logic.

Though the film rotates around her character, Whalley-Kilmer seldom brings Alston to life, which makes her unbattled compromises, and more crucially her shift from victim to self-assured revenger, hard to fathom. Byrne isn't given much to work with, and doesn't, but the sensitive Hurt plays hurt as the compromised but redeemable Vesey. Par for his discourse, powder-keg Assante is disturbingly charismatic as Pirone.

Despite solid technical credits -- cinematographer Frederick Elmes wisely brightens the film's noir aspirations -- "Trial by Jury" will likely enjoy only a short detention in local theaters.