Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman ("The Client," "Batman Forever" and the dreadful "Silent Fall"), perhaps under orders from Grisham, tries to keep everything from the book. But the result is strained — lots of flamboyant moments but no foundation for any of them.

A striking example is a courtroom scene near the end of the film (which has been shown too many times in the previews), where Spacey is trying to get Jackson riled up on the witness stand. When Jackson blurts out his big line — " . . . and I hope they burn in hell!" — it doesn't elicit the expected audience response because it simply comes too quickly. How can dramatic tension be relieved when no dramatic tension has been developed? It's just another fleeting moment that quickly comes and goes.

The cast really is terrific, and cool and measured Jackson, flamboyant Spacey, drunken but wise Donald Sutherland, ever-sneering Ku Klux Klan leader Kiefer Sutherland (who is unbilled), stoic and wounded cop Chris Cooper and many others (including British actors Brenda Fricker and Patrick McGoohan as Southerners) get their moment or two to shine. But to no avail.

In fact, amid all this high-power talent, it's a surprise that Oliver Platt steals the show, playing a slovenly divorce lawyer who provides comic relief. The film is so stern and sincere that the audience feels relief just seeing him come onscreen.

The person getting the most press right now is McConaughey, of course. He's riding Hollywood's hype wave, and he does deliver a strong presence and a capable performance. His big moment comes toward the end of the film in an extended monologue as he offers his summation to the jury. He handles it quite well, and the scene provides an interesting moment, simply because it relies so heavily on the actor. Schumacher resists the urge to show flashbacks and just lets the actor do his thing, recounting the events that have put Jackson on the stand.

But that scene also flies in the face of the more than two hours that precede it, since the rest of the movie is about big, bombastic, sensationalized movie moments — however simplistic, cluttered and over the top they may be.

In the end, "A Time to Kill" is a lot like Spacey's character — grand-standing, speechifying, manipulative, evasive, meandering and unable to reach its potential.

Maybe giving an author all that control isn't such a good idea after all.

"A Time to Kill" is rated R for violence, rape, profanity, racial epithets and marijuana smoking (by one of the rednecks early in the film). The film deserves its R, though none of this material is as graphic as it might have been.