'Double Jeopardy' fails to thrill

At an indeterminate time during her incarceration in prison for murdering her husband, Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd) runs laps around the yard. Alone. In the rain. In the dark. Trying so hard to beef up those girlie-girl muscles with sprints and pumping iron. While her two prison chick buddies root her on.

It's so original that I almost puked in my popcorn.

That's about the best that can be said for any part - not to mention the sum - of "Double Jeopardy," a wretchedly misguided attempt to put together an edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller starring Judd and Tommy Lee "No, I haven't made this movie befo

Courtesy of Paramount Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones fight for their lives in "Double Jeopardy."

re" Jones. Libby, framed because she's too beautiful and innocent to ever do something so nasty, learns that she cannot be tried twice for the same crime and resolves to find and murder her husband - again, because it apparently didn't take the first time.

When we first meet Libby, she has a picture-perfect life: Handsome loving husband Nick (Bruce Greenwood), smack-me-I'm-cute son Matty (Spencer Treat Clark), coastal Washington home straight out of an architectural magazine. She and Nick rent a sailboat and set out for a weekend of hot sex.

She awakens one night to find herself covered in blood and a trail of gore that leads to the edge of the boat and into the deep blue sea below. Nick is missing and soon presumed dead. Libby is frantic and soon presumed responsible. After a quick trial, she is thrown in the pen where she instantly becomes antisocial and determined to find, if not Nick's killer, then Nick himself.

Many free weights, laps and vats of tapioca pudding later, Libby is a well-oiled machine out on parole and on the prowl. After doing six years for the crime she didn't commit, she arrives at a halfway house run by jowly Travis Layman, a man who doesn't really believe in second chances but definitely believes in seeing the bottom of his whiskey flask. By this point in the seemingly interminable movie, all of my popcorn is gone, which is good, because every time Layman said something either supremely bullheaded, obnoxious or just plain old loud, I would have required the Heimlich maneuver.

Long story short: Libby wants her son back, wants revenge, blah blah blah, Layman chases her for violating parole but of course starts to believe her cockamamie "I was framed!" sob story, blah blah blah, Libby runs all over the country tracking down Nick, blah blah blah, she ends up in New Orleans because it's really fun to make movies in New Orleans, blah blah blah. The End.

As if the utterly insipid story "Double Jeopardy" has to offer isn't bad enough, it's so poorly directed and edited that it seems at times that whole chunks were jaggedly removed, leaving either side of the excision flapping in the breeze. Things don't make sense, characters wander in and out or are conveniently killed, due process is thrown out the window and the world these characters live in generally seems to be certainly not this one. Meanwhile, Jones phones in his performance from wherever it is that rich movie stars move to when they don't feel like making movies for any other reason than the paycheck, and Judd slogs through yet another role pretending that just because she's pretty she's a quality actress who has a vocal range beyond purely deadpan.

This is not a fun romp as a jilted wife chases after her conniving husband and poor little boy. This is a calculatedly awful portrayal of the dissolution of a life, and its very existence is an affront to good writing and decent filmmaking. "Double Jeopardy" is a perfect reminder as to why we can never drop our guard against celluloid crud. Just because we're entering Oscar season doesn't mean that every film is worth the hype.

09-24-99