Double Jeopardy is a 1999 American crime thriller film directed by Bruce Beresford and starring Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones, Bruce Greenwood, and Gillian Barber. The film is about a woman wrongfully imprisoned for murder who, while eluding her parole officer, tracks down her husband who had framed her. Released on September 24, the film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $177 million.
Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd) and her husband Nick (Bruce Greenwood) are wealthy residents of Whidbey Island, Washington. Libby's best friend Angela Green offers to look after their four-year-old son Matty so Libby and Nick can go sailing for a romantic weekend. Libby awakens to find blood everywhere and her husband missing. The Coast Guard patrol arrive and find Libby holding a bloody knife on deck.
After six years in prison, Libby is paroled to a halfway house, under the close supervision of parole officer Travis Lehman (Tommy Lee Jones), a former law professor whose wife and daughter left him due to his alcoholism. To search for Nick, Libby violates curfew and is caught breaking into Matty's old school on Whidbey Island to get Angela's records. As Lehman delivers Libby back to prison via a car ferry, he handcuffs her to the car door handle and leaves to go topside. Libby sees that he left the keys, starts the car, and rams the handle against a pipe, loosening it. Lehman sees her and tries to intervene, but as he gets into the car by breaking a window she drives it off the ferry. As the car sinks, he uncuffs her, and in the underwater confusion she takes his gun and swims away. She visits her mother who gives her cash and her truck.
At a car dealership Libby uses Angela's social security number to learn her address, but when she drives to Colorado she learns from Angela's former neighbor that Angela, under a different name, died three years earlier in a home gas explosion. A picture in the paper reveals a piece of artwork, a painting by Wassily Kandinsky owned by Nick, which Libby is able to trace to New Orleans through an art gallery. There she finds Nick running a small luxury hotel under the alias Jonathan Devereaux.
Libby confronts Nick during a fund-raising auction at his hotel, and demands that he return Matty in exchange for her walking away. Nick claims he faked his death in order to provide her with the insurance money, not believing she would be convicted. During their conversation Libby sees Lehman arrive at the hotel, and leaves. Lehman tells "Jonathan" that Libby believes he is her dead ex-husband, and informs the local police that she is in the area.
The next day Libby arranges to meet Nick at Lafayette Cemetery No. 3 (filmed at Lafayette Cemetery No. 1) to hand off Matty. Nick hires a boy to lure Libby to a mausoleum, where Nick knocks Libby out and locks her in a coffin. She shoots the hinges off the coffin lid with Lehman's gun, pushes it aside, and breaks the mausoleum's window. Meanwhile, while checking in on "Jonathan", Lehman notices the Kandinsky artwork that Libby was searching for in the gallery. Now unsure of Libby's guilt, he requests that Washington fax him the driver's license for "Nicholas Parsons". Washington discourages him from continuing the search when the first result shows a clearly different man.
Furious, Libby returns to the hotel. Lehman intercepts her, and she breaks down, emotionally spent. Lehman goes to Nick's hotel, where he reveals to Nick that there were actually six "Nicholas Parsons" with driver's licenses in Washington, and that he knows his true identity. Lehman agrees to take a $1,000,000 bribe, and Nick strongly hints that he killed Libby. Libby emerges from a back room with Lehman's gun, and instead of killing Nick she shoots a hole in the Kandinsky. Nick then tells her what boarding school Matty is at. Lehman reveals that he has recorded the confession, and Nick pulls a gun from his desk, shoots Lehman in the shoulder, and in the ensuing fight Nick gets the upper hand and is about to shoot Lehman again when Libby, who has recovered her gun, kills Nick. She plans to disappear, but Lehman insists they go back to Washington to get her pardoned, which they do. They then find Matty at the boarding school in Georgia, where he immediately recognizes his mother.
Casting
- Ashley Judd as Elizabeth "Libby" Parsons
- Tommy Lee Jones as Travis Lehman
- Bruce Greenwood as Nicholas "Nick" Parsons/Simon Ryder/Jonathan Devereaux
- Annabeth Gish as Angie Green/Angie Ryder
- Roma Maffia as Margaret Skolowski
- Jay Brazeau as Bobby Long
- Michael Gaston as Cutter
- Daniel Lapaine as Handsome Internet Expert
- Dave Hager as Jim Mangold
- Benjamin Weir as Matty Parsons - Age 4
- Spencer Treat Clark as Matty Parsons - Age 11
- Davenia McFadden as Evelyn Lake
- Betsy Brantley as Prosecutor
- Babz Chula as Ruby
On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 27% based on 86 reviews and an average rating of 4.44/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "A talented cast fails to save this unremarkable thriller." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100 based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert gave the film two and a half stars out of four, and said "This movie was made primarily in the hopes that it would gross millions and millions of dollars, which probably explains most of the things that are wrong with it." Leonard Maltin gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, calling it "slick entertainment". Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the film is a "well-acted diversion, directed by Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) with an intelligent grasp of the moment-to-moment emotion". For her performance in the film Ashley Judd won Favorite Actress at the 6th Blockbuster Entertainment Awards.
