Double Jeopardy (1999 film)

Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd) and her husband Nick (Bruce Greenwood) are wealthy residents of Whidbey Island, Washington. With her best friend Angela Green offering to look after their four-year-old son, Matty, Libby and Nick 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.

Even with Nick's body unaccounted for, Libby is arrested, tried, and convicted of murder, with the motives being life insurance and Nick's being under investigation for embezzlement. Libby asks Angela to look after Matty while she is in prison. At first, Angela brings Matty to visit often, but the visits eventually cease. Libby tracks Angela to San Francisco and calls her. In the midst of their conversation, Nick enters the apartment, and Matty yells, "Daddy!" Libby realizes that Nick faked his death and framed her to run off with Angela. After failing to get investigative help, a fellow inmate tells Libby to get paroled for good behavior by falsely claiming remorse for "killing" Nick. Once free, Libby can kill Nick with impunity due to the Double Jeopardy Clause in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

After six years, 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. Libby starts the car again and rams the handle against a pipe, loosening it. Lehman sees her and tries to intervene, but she drives the car off the ferry. He uncuffs her, but in the confusion she takes his gun and swims away. She visits her mother who gives her cash and her truck.

Libby uses Angela's social security number to learn her address at a car dealership, but learns from a neighbor that Angela recently died in a home gas explosion under a different name. A picture in the paper reveals a very specific piece of artwork owned by Nick which Libby is able to trace to New Orleans through an art gallery, where 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 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. Lehman also arrives at the hotel forcing Libby to flee; he informs "Jonathan" that Libby believes he is her dead ex-husband. Lehman informs the local police that she is in the area.

The next day Libby arranges to meet Nick at Lafayette Cemetery #3 to hand off Matty. Nick uses a decoy kid to lure Libby to a mausoleum where he knocks her out and locks her in a coffin. She escapes by shooting the hinges off with Lehman's gun and breaking a window. Meanwhile, while checking in on "Jonathan," Lehman notices the unique artwork that Libby was searching for in the gallery. Now unsure of himself, he requests 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, defeated. Lehman reveals to Nick that there were actually 6 "Nicholas Parsons" in Washington, and he knows his true identity. He agrees to take a $1,000,000 bribe and Nick reveals that he killed Libby. Libby emerges from a back room and Lehman reveals he was recording the confession. Nick pulls a gun from his desk and shoots Lehman; in the ensuing melee Nick gets the upper hand but Libby recovers her gun and kills him. She plans to disappear, but Lehman insists they go back to Washington to get her pardoned, which they do. Finally they find Matty at a boarding school in Georgia, where he immediately recognizes his mother.

• 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

After Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan and Brooke Shields all declined the role, Jodie Foster was attached to star in the film as Libby Parsons and Bruce Beresford met with her several times about the script:

She said to me once, when we were having . . .not an argument, we had different points of view over something, and she said, 'We'll have to do it my way, I'm afraid.' And I said, 'Why, Jodie?' And she said, 'Because I'm so intelligent. I'm such an intelligent person that there is no point in disagreeing with me because I'm always right.' I thought she was joking, but she wasn't! [laughs] She had this extraordinary opinion of her own IQ.[3]

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."[4] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100 based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[5] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[6]

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."[7] Leonard Maltin gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, calling it "slick entertainment".[8] 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".[9] For her performance in the film Ashley Judd won Favorite Actress at the 6th Blockbuster Entertainment Awards.[10]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Double Jeopardy (1999 film)

• Double Jeopardy at IMDb
• Straight Dope article on Double Jeopardy, including discussion of this film
• Double Jeopardy at Rotten Tomatoes