Time to kill videorecording Warner Bros. presents in association with Regency Enterprises ; screenplay by Akiva Goldsman ; produced by Arnon Milchan ... [et al.] ; directed by Joel Schumacher

Based on the novel by John Grisham

Originally issued as a motion picture

Extended play (CLV)

Dolby surround, AC-3 digital, digitally processed, stereo

A Time to Kill is a 1996 American legal drama film. It is based on John Grisham's 1989 novel of the same name. In Canton, Mississippi, ten-year-old African American girl Tonya Hailey is abducted, raped, and beaten by two local white men, Billy Ray Cobb and James Willard, while on her way home. The duo dump her in a nearby river after a failed attempt to hang her. Tonya survives, and the two men are arrested by Sheriff Ozzie Walls.Tonya's father, Carl Lee Hailey, contacts Jake Brigance, a white lawyer who previously defended his brother. Brigance admits the possibility that the rapists will walk free. Carl Lee goes to the county courthouse and opens fire with an automatic rifle, killing both rapists and unintentionally wounding Deputy Dwayne Looney, whose leg is later amputated. Carl Lee is arrested and Brigance agrees to defend him. As the rape and subsequent revenge killing gain national media attention, district attorney Rufus Buckley decides to seek the death penalty, and presiding Judge Omar Noose denies Brigance a change of venue to a more ethnically diverse county, meaning that Carl Lee will have an all-White jury. Brigance seeks help from his defense team: law student Ellen Roark, close friend Harry Rex Vonner, and former mentor and longtime activist Lucien Wilbanks, a once-great civil rights lawyer. Meanwhile, Billy Ray's brother, Freddie Lee Cobb, plans to avenge his brother's death by joining and enlisting the help of the Mississippi branch of the Ku Klux Klan and its Grand Dragon, Stump Sisson, to ensure Carl Lee's conviction and death sentence by any means necessary. On the first day of the trial, the Klan rallies, only to be outnumbered by counter-protesters consisting of the area's minority residents and whites who support Carl Lee. The protest erupts into a violent brawl that results in dozens of injuries and the death of Stump Sisson. The Klan also begins to target Brigance, assaulting his elderly secretary and her husband, who dies of a heart attack brought on by the assault. They also burn a cross on his lawn and threaten his wife and daughter. When Brigance refuses to back down, Cobb kidnaps and assaults Roark. The Klan then increases their attacks, including burning Brigance's house. Dispirited, Brigance tells Carl Lee that there is little hope for an acquittal. Carl Lee replies that he had chosen Brigance as an attorney because he is a white man and has insight into how the jury sees Carl Lee. "When you look at me, you don't see a man, you see a black man. (...) You are my secret weapon because you are one of the bad guys. You don't mean to be, but you are. It's how you was raised. (...) No matter how you see me, you see me different, you see me like that jury sees me, you are them. (...) If you was on that jury, what would it take to convince you to set me free?". During closing arguments, a deeply-shaken Brigance tells the jury to close their eyes and listen to a story. He describes, in slow and painful detail, the entire ordeal of Tonya, in which some of the jurors shed tears. Brigance then asks the jury, in his final comment, to "now imagine she's white."

Director of photography, Peter Menzies, Jr. ; editor, William Steinkamp ; music, Elliot Goldenthal

Rated R.

Closed-captioned for the hearing impaired