"A Time to Kill" is a movie that will touch all of your emotions. For those with children (especially daughters), you might be filled with rage. For those rooting for equity and retribution in the racially torn South, you might cheer. But for those seeking justice in Americas judicial system, this movie is disturbing.
Synopsis.
This movie is based in a southern Mississippi town where racial tension runs high through out the community. .
The plot begins with 10-year old, black girl, Tonya Hailey, one of the many children of a poor black man Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson), being raped and beaten and hung from a tree and left to die by two young intoxicated white men.
Carl Lee, the father of the victim, takes the law into his own hands and shoots to death the pair of men in front of dozens of witnesses in the Canton, Mississippi courthouse just before the two men were to go on trial.
Earlier, Carl Lee had also approached his friend Jake Brigance (McConaughey), a young white struggling lawyer, and asked for Jake's help in case he gets in trouble. In other words he was indirectly forewarning Jake of his intentions to kill the men.
The rest of the movie follows the trial of Carl Lee, defended by Jake Brigance creating a dramatic forum for ethical debate uncommon in most commercial American films.
The Ethical Dilemmas.
1. The first ethical dilemma here is the killing.
Can Carl Lee justify killing those men by what they did to his daughter? .
They raped her and basically destroyed her life, so does that mean that they have to be punished to death? I think it all comes down to whether the rape of a child justifies murder. .
Does Tonya's father have a right to kill those men for what they did?.
2. But the next dilemma is faced by the lawyer.
His argument is that Carl Lee was insane when he killed them. .
But as a lawyer, as someone who represents justice, should he continue to plead insanity when he knows that Carl Lee had committed the murder in cold blood? Carl Lee had approached and forewarned Jake of his intentions.
