For the first half this is really only a one-star movie. The daft plot, riddled with loopholes, improbabilities and downright silliness, is irritating.

But the second act compensates to some degree. James Spader plays a rich-kid lawyer who's aiming to go into politics.

Unwisely, he runs off with Vietnamese beauty Lee (Charlotte Lewis), gets videotaped in the jacuzzi with her and fights with her father who mysteriously winds up dead.

When Lee is charged with murdering her father, Spader presents the case for the defence.

The courtroom scenes are by far the best part of a well-acted film but many viewers impatient with the story's idiocies may well have given up by then.