Maybe John Grisham should take a page from Stephen King and start putting his name in the title of movies adapted from his books. This is "John Grisham's A Time to Kill" more than it is a director's film.

As directed by the ever-superficial Joel Schumacher (Grisham's "The Client," "Batman Forever,"

"Dying Young") and co-produced by Grisham, "A Time to Kill" is extremely faithful to the lawyer-writer's book. And that's the problem.

There is so much plot crammed into this 21/2-hour thriller that instead of an epic, ensemble tale of racism in modern America, it becomes an episodic, skim-the-surface series of melodramatic skits.

And all the best lines are in the previews.

The A-list cast is first-rate, of course, and each member tries hard to do something more with it. Sandra Bullock fans are in for the biggest disappointment, since — despite her top billing — Bullock's law-school-whiz character is merely a supporting role. And her contrived romance with Matthew McConaughey is one of the film's most underdeveloped elements (and there are many).

The story has Samuel L. Jackson playing a blue-collar family man in Mississippi whose 10-year-old daughter is assaulted and nearly killed by a pair of drunken redneck thugs. Because the girl is black and the thugs are white, Jackson fears they will get off with a light sentence, so he enters the country courthouse the night before their arraignment, waits until the next morning and bursts out of a closet to blow them away.

Jackson's arrest and subsequent trial becomes a political football as the grandstanding prosecutor whose eye is on the governor's mansion (Kevin Spacey) aggressively goes after Jackson's hide. But the focus here is on Jackson's lawyer (hot newcomer McConaughey), a down-and-out idealist with a young daughter and a sexy wife (Ashley Judd).

McConaughey knows this case could put him on the map, and the film is mainly concerned with his struggle to find a balance for his integrity and his desire to care for his family, without forgetting that Jackson's life is on the line.

But the movie also has bigger fish to fry, delving into racism, civil rights, political corruption, community standards, freedom in the New South, legal ethics and myriad other issues. (How'd they miss alcoholism and nicotine addiction since everyone drinks and smokes quite heavily in this film?)

Instead of slowing down to develop a few of these ideas, however, "A Time to Kill" instead uses them as touchstones, hopping over each one and hurrying to the next.