The Gingerbread Man

Almost as soon as hotshot Savannah lawyer Rick Magruder (Branagh) picks up waitress Mallory Doss (Davidtz), you know he's being set up. If he's the shark here, she's the angler - that's the way these stories work. It's late and a hurricane's brewing, so Rick drives her home. She vents as she strips: her father is crazed, she explains, and threatening to kill her. She doesn't know where to turn, she says, turning to Rick, naked. He takes her and her case. Committed for psychiatric evaluation, her old man (Duvall) escapes with havoc in his heart. Altman and John Grisham make uneasy bedfellows, the one inspired by accident and chaos, the other a control freak, moralist and conservative. In this, Altman's wet and windy film of an unpublished Grisham story, the director keeps squeezing narrative strictures; it's an open and shut case with too much emotional baggage to fit. To a degree, the two authors cancel each other out - the movie probably won't satisfy fans of either.