The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees that no one can be convicted twice for the same crime. It's called double jeopardy -- which is also the name of a new suspense thriller starring Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones. We have a case in point in "Double Jeopardy," in which Jones mainly reprises his role from the 1993s "The Fugitive" (not to mention its 1998 sequel, "U.S. Marshals"). In scene after scene he's chasing Judd -- a woman falsely convicted of a crime, through airports, crowded streets, and pouring rain.
Judd stars as Libby Parsons, wife and mother. She's enjoying an idyllic life with her son and her loving husband Nick, played by Bruce Greenwood. Then suddenly one night, during a romantic weekend at sea, her husband vanishes from their luxury sailboat. Libby is left, covered in blood, to explain his disappearance to the authorities. Libby arranges for her best friend Angie, played by Annabeth Gish, to take care of her son, and off she goes to prison. While in the big house, Libby is befriended by a tough dame named Margaret. Margaret, also in the slammer for killing her husband, just happens to be an attorney. She passes on the little bit of information about the Fifth Amendment to Libby.
Thousands of push-ups, and six years later, she is released on parole and sent to finish out her sentence at a halfway house run by burned-out parole officer Travis Lehman, played stoically by Jones. Of course, hell hath no fury like a woman framed by her husband for his own death. Libby skips out of the halfway house, and proceeds to travel cross country in an effort to track the weasel down. Judd is one heck of a trouper and she gives it her all, but only the Jones' smoldering presence gives this film any weight at all. And even he is only window dressing.
