After an explosive opening, this John Grisham story limps along in desultory fashion and pretty much fizzles out at the end.

An old Ku Klux Klan activist (Gene Hackman) sits in Death Row awaiting execution for a bombing years before that cost the lives of twin boys.

His lawyer grandson (Chris O'Donnell), whose father committed suicide and whose aunt (Faye Dunaway) is an alcoholic, arrives to fight the case.

There are leads which fail to come to any climax and the findings of a co-conspirator that's no revelation since we haven't seen the man before.

The results are, kindly, not very interesting. Hackman does his best as the dead man walking, but Dunaway overacts as his daughter.