The Whole Truth

The film's closing minutes offer some parting pieces of information that upend some previously laid assumptions, but it's a grafted-on coda rather than a well-choreographed gut punch.

If you want the whole truth, Courtney Hunt's new film is not so bad.

The script for The Whole Truth is an "airport book," although it contains even less sizzle and grit than most of those.

Trundling along on the drone of Ramsay's pseudo-hardboiled voice-over, "The Whole Truth" plays like an especially claustrophobic courtroom procedural, drably photographed and generically framed.

Instead of building tension, "The Whole Truth" lets it bleed out.

The film's bleached colors and Reeves' trademark woodenness add to its emotional remoteness, though Basso, Zellweger and Belushi create a convincing family in crisis.

This courtroom mystery is more of a procedural puzzle than a realistic legal drama - indeed, one can imagine Agatha Christie coming up with the basic plot. It isn't exactly a nailbiter, but the story's twists are enjoyably engaging.

Director Courtney Hunt cleverly intercuts the courtroom drama with often contradictory flashbacks, although experienced legal eagles won't have much trouble in spotting the final twist in this Grisham-lite tale.

I don't know if it was a budget thing or just inexperience which resulted in this film having the look and quality of a bad movie of the week.

The only real anomalistic quality to Courtney Hunt's long awaited sophomore feature The Whole Truth is why she chose to undertake this derivatively formulated courtroom drama in the first place.