HIGH CRIMES

Some are born mediocre, some achieve mediocrity, and some have it thrust upon them. Take Ashley Judd, for instance. In strict Hollwood terms, there is nothing obviously wrong with her. She's no worse an actress than the more successful Sandra Bullock, she's arguably better than Hollywood's current favourite, Cameron Diaz - and if you squint a little, you can almost believe you're watching Angelina Jolie instead. Yet it seems to be the destiny of Judd - bland, irrepressibly perky Judd - to have either unremarkable secondary roles in first-rate films ('Smoke', 'Heat'), or else top-billing roles in truly second- rate films ('Kiss the Girls', 'Double Jeopardy', 'The Passion of Darkly Noon'). If her name appears near the top of a movie poster, you just know it's some kind of a miracle that the film is showing in a theatre at all, instead of going straight to video where it belongs.

And so it is with Judd's new vehicle, 'High Crimes', a military courtroom thriller modelled on just about any John Grisham adaptation you can recall, with 'A Few Good Men' thrown in for good measure. When her husband is seized by the FBI and accused of carrying out a massacre of civilians in El Salvador over a decade ago, attorney Claire Kubik (Judd) must come to terms with his secret past and take on the might of the military establishment to prove his innocence.

Claire enlists the help of military lawyer Charlie Grimes, played by Morgan Freeman - but Freeman's avuncular gravitas cannot save Judd from the sheer averageness of this film any more than he was able to save her in 'Kiss the Girls'. She also turns to her low-rent sister Jackie, played by Amanda Peet - only to find the lustrous Peet stealing every scene from her (as she did to Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry in 'The Whole Nine Yards').

While 'High Crimes' does, to its credit, manage to sneak in some timely commentary on the US military machine's overreadiness both to brand any perceived enemy a terrorist, and to employ terrorist tactics of its own, in the end this is little more than a by-the-book genre pic. Expect cover-ups, expect political conspiracies, expect twists - just don't expect any of it to take you by surprise.

Anton Bitel