Like a certain annoying bunny, the John Grisham adaptation factory keeps on going and going... Eight features have been produced from his novels and stories, with this latest black-and white (as in morality, not film stock) thriller cum courtroom drama featuring the heavyweight acting talents of Hackman and Hoffman, as well as everyone's favourite baby-faced hipster John Cusack. I'm sure it sounded good on paper.

Dustin Hoffman is Wendell Rohr, a straight-shooting lawyer retained by the widow of a man killed in one of those disgruntled-employee-kills-co-workers massacres that were once a prominent occurrence only in the States. On behalf of the widow, Rohr is suing the manufacturer of the gun used in the killings. The lawyer for the gun company, Durwood Cable (Bruce Davison) is the evil courtroom face of the corrupt jury consultant played by Gene Hackman, a certain Rankin Fitch (you gotta love these over-the-top names, at least), a man with a seemingly limitless ability to access the past of every possible juror in the world in order to assess whether or not they will return a verdict favourable to his client.

Cusack plays jury member Nicholas Easter, who, with his partner Marlee (Rachel Weisz), has an agenda of his own: he will sell his services to the highest bidder - in this case Rohr or Fitch - and sway his fellow jurors to come up with the appropriate verdict. Or so it seems. Once Fitch becomes aware that there is a plant in 'his' jury, the movie becomes like every thriller you've ever seen, albeit one that wears its pro forma 'guns are bad' message on its sleeve.

But the acting must be great, right? Well, the actors are only as good as the script they are asked to bring to life and the script for Runaway Jury, written by the quartet of Brian Koppelman, David Levien, Rick Cleveland and Matthew Chapman, suffers from what nearly every Hollywood movie suffers from: a distinct lack of moral complexity. Hackman is such an evil presence and Hoffman such a beacon of moral rectitude (although he is tempted, briefly, to tarnish his wings and do the wrong thing) that audience members can easily be forgiven for throwing up their hands yet again for being treated like ten-year-olds.

Among the likeable things in the movie - the early scenes are good enough to suggest the movie is going to be much better than it is; Cusack is his very watchable self - is the presence of Luis Guzman as one of Cusack's fellow jurors. He's been doing yeoman work in dozens of movies, from Boogie Nights and The Limey to Traffic and Punch-Drunk Love. For this reviewer's money, any film with him in it can't be all bad (except maybe The Adventures of Pluto Nash).