Critic Reviews
48
Metascore
Mixed or Average
positive
9(30%)
mixed
19(63%)
negative
2(7%)
Showing 30 Critic Reviews
75
Despite a few shortcuts and some small but nagging inconsistencies -- not to mention weak performances in a couple of key roles -- Just Cause delivers.
75
An intelligent and riveting courtroom thriller. [16 Feb 1995]
67
It's a rich, humid mix of race, murder, and mystery that works well, even if it doesn't work perfectly.
67
Sean Connery's familiar, imposing manner and the seething stares of Laurence Fishburne generate a lot of tension, but it is the mercurial hamminess of Ed Harris as a death-row madman that gives the film the goosing it needs. [17 Feb 1995, p.10C]
63
Despite its tendency to tread well-traveled roads, Just Cause is filmed with enough energy and craft that, for the majority of its one-hundred minute running time, it's reasonably entertaining.
63
With sufficiently intelligent plotting and an A-list cast led by Sean Connery, Just Cause rises above many standard-issue thrillers with enough momentum to grab and hold your attention. [17 Feb 1995, p.I34]
63
Derived from a novel by former Miami Herald reporter John Katzenbach, it might be described as an inversion of the treasured '50s genre known as the Crusading Liberal Movie, as pioneered by, say, Stanley Kramer. But Just Cause doesn't just invert it, it turns it inside out, on its head, upside down and backward, then kicks it in the tail. [17 Feb 1995]
63
Just Cause is an entertaining if overwrought death-row thriller built on the pros and cons of the capital punishment debate, and it owes most of its appeal to the presence of Sean Connery. [17 Feb 1995, p.03]
63
The movie is generally entertaining, although toward the end director Arne Glimcher and a couple of screenwriters try so hard to make everything fit neatly together in a formulaic package that they end up losing credibility. [17 Feb 1995, p.7E]
60
A good premise spins out of control in the hectic final hour.
