We the Jury (1996) Lauren Hutton, Kelly McGillis.
Your abusive husband: Should you kill him? Lifetime is ambivalent. Part 4 in a series.
This is basically 12 Angry Men, except instead of acquitting an innocent defendant, the jury examines little facts overlooked by counsel during the trial to find a woman presenting the battered wife defense guilty of the first-degree murder of her husband.
Lauren Hutton plays popular daytime talkshow host Wynne Atwood, who is on trial for having taken a gun into the bedroom in her house where her husband was with his mistress, and shot him repeatedly in the face. At trial, she paints a pretty lurid picture of abuse, including being forced into group sex by her husband, and his threats to kill her. The jurors (who run a gamut of stereotypes, from the sexist macho Latino man to the hesitant elderly immigrant woman to the chivalrous old gentleman to the spazzy feminist who smokes pointedly from within her bubble of rage, etc.) initially split along gender lines, with the women wanting to go for a manslaughter verdict, and the men mostly split between first and second degree murder. Bit by bit, they pick holes in Atwood’s story while squabbling pettishly with each other, and eventually decide that she really killed her husband to avoid losing half of her considerable estate in divorce proceedings over her husband’s philandering, and made the abuse story up out of whole cloth.
So, while clearly we’re supposed to think that the host’s crime is manslaughter at worst if her abuse story is true, it just so happens not to be. (“I can’t betray all women!” declaims the prickly feminist juror as the host’s lies become undeniable even to her. “Not all women, just one woman, who lied,” explains the middle-aged intelligent rational soccer mom audience identification character.)
I’m awarding a full additional star for the scene where they’re about to read the verdict, and Lauren Hutton is striking her very best long-suffering tragic Lifetime heroine pose, which is 100% convincing except by then you know for sure that she’s actually a lying cold-blooded murderer.
Lifetime Rating: ****
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