A Time to Kill

Matthew McConaughey plays a young, attractive and highly-skilled attorney named Jake Brigance, who is faced with the toughest case of his life, one that on many occassions also threatens his life. In the southern Mississippi town of Canton, the KKK is active and the tension is high when the black majority is angered at the raping and attempted murdering of a black man's 10-year-old daughter. Against Jake's advice, the distraught father (Samuel L. Jackson) takes revenge, gunning down the two criminals in the local courthouse. Racial hatred hightens with the suspense and conflict threatens to break out regardless of the verdict. Jake must decide, along with his new, eager assistant (Sandra Bullock) whether he and his family can run the risk of defending this man.

Factual error: Toward the end of the film, Matthew McConnaughey is in his office late at night and hears someone outside (it turns out to be his wife). However, McConnaughey draws a revolver from his desk drawer and we can hear (but not see) him pulling the hammer back to cock the gun. Problem is: When pulling back the hammer on a revolver, the cylinder turns to rotate the next bullet into position. The cylinder did not turn. The sound we heard was obviously added by the sound editors after the scene was shot.

More mistakes in A Time to Kill

Lucien Wilbanks: If you win this case, justice will prevail, and if you lose, justice will also prevail. Now that is a strange case.

More quotes from A Time to Kill

Trivia: In one of the courtroom scenes, the judge refers to Sandra Bullock as "Lois Lane." Around the same time this film was being made, Bullock was heavily considered to play the role of Lois Lane in Tim Burton's Superman Lives, but the movie was canceled just weeks before shooting.

jshy7979

More trivia for A Time to Kill

Question: When Carl Lee Hailey visited Jake to tell him that he was thinking about killing those 2 men, wouldn't he have been required to report that to law enforcement? It's not considered attorney/client privilege when you tell your lawyer that you are planning to kill someone. And then he went home and told his wife about it, so wouldn't that also make her an accessory?

Answer: I'm not from America but couldn't you just say the conversation didn't take place? Maybe they didn't want to say anything due to being parents themselves and thinking they would do the same?

More questions & answers from A Time to Kill

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.