A Mother’s Story-Of Sorts-Ashley Judd And Tommy Lee Jones’ “Double Jeopardy” (1999)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Double Jeopardy, starring Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones, 1999

The film under review Double Jeopardy was/is billed as a suspense thriller and at a certain level that is true with a few scenes that qualify for that title. But in the end, literally in the end, this is essentially a mother’s story wrapped up in a thriller. A mother’s story of never giving up that primordial bond between mother and child (and as the film postulates child and mother). The film shows in extremis what a mother will, and will not do, to cement that eternal bond.         

Here’s how that idea played out in this film. Libby, played by fetching Ashley Judd, is married to Nick, a financier, and they have a son. They are wealthy residents in an up-scale community on an island in Washington. Nick suggested at one point when they were having some marital difficulties they “get away” on a sailboat. Libby, a lover of boats and the sea, agreed. During that weekend though all hell broke loose. After making love one day Libby woke up from her sleep to be confronted with much blood, including on a knife, the presumed item that caused the scene –and no Nick. The whole set-up looks like Libby murdered him, especially after the authorities found out that Nick was on the financial skids-and had a two million dollar life insurance policy payable to Libby (although I am not altogether sure that she could collect on a murder to grab the dough as suggested by the film-in any case any insurance company would fight that battle with that much dough at stake.   

Frankly, I think that Libby had a good case for ineffective assistance of counsel on appeal since not only did the authorities try her for murder but a jury convicted her on pretty flimsy evidence-and no body. That aside Libby drew a long sentence at the women’s prison-and “lost” her son-has a friend adopt him to avoid the trauma of knowing his mother was in stir for murder. This is where the mother’s story begins to play out. While in jail she was in contact with her son via the phone. One day when talking to him he let the cat out of the bag by saying “Daddy” when Nick entered the room. Yeah, Nick was not dead, far from it, had flown the coop on the financial difficulties with that staged blood bath. Libby, now wised up, went into overdrive (literally at some points) and sought and received a parole after having spent six years in prison.

Parole though meant she had to stay in a half-way house and keep to a stringent set of rules laid down in the person of the parole officer, Lehman, played by Tommy Lee Jones. Needless to say in search of Nick (or whatever alias he was using at the time as it turned out) she would break those rules and run into serious controversy with the hard-nosed Lehman. Libby through foul means and fair eventually caught up with Nick’s trail in New Orleans with Lehman in hot pursuit behind her since she had escaped his clutches at one point when he was trying to bring her in. Before too long she caught up with Jonathan (Nick’s new moniker) and tries to negotiate with him for her son. No dice. No dice until the final confrontation with Lehman in the room where she shoots her already dead husband to death.              

That last sentence is what double jeopardy is all about in the context of this film. See she had already been tried and convicted for “killing” Nick on the boat. Although this may strain credibility under Anglo-Saxon law once you have been convicted of a crime the authorities can’t double-down on you. For Libby that meant that even if her intention to really kill Nick happened, and she had plenty of good reasons to, good case for self-defense could be made as the shoot-out played out though, she would “walk.” Lehman made sure she was pardoned for the original “crime” and she got her son back. Interesting film