Reasonable Doubt

Dominic Cooper lacks the everyman quality needed to carry this noir-like thriller, in which he plays a cocky hotshot Chicago lawyer whose ethics are tested to the extreme. Even so, that's not the overriding problem with the film, which begins with a promising bit of intrigue. Cooper leaves his wife (Erin Karpluk) and newborn to go out drinking with the lads before mowing down a pedestrian on the drive home. After making an anonymous 911 call, he flees the scene to protect his flourishing career. But then his conscience kicks in after a passer-by (a deader than deadpan Samuel L Jackson) is arrested for killing the jaywalker and Cooper is handed the task of prosecuting the case. British director Peter Howitt (working under the pseudonym Peter P Croudins) serves up a meaty moral dilemma and, for Cooper, this should be the precursor to fleshing out a complex character. Unfortunately, the rules of the game change halfway through and the plot is twisted beyond the realms of credibility. Howitt also ups the action and it all becomes simultaneously predictable and illogical as it rushes towards a violent finale. Evidently, the director raised questions he couldn't answer, so decided to wash his hands of the whole thing.