With her perky-and-quirky acting style, Ashley Judd is to thrills and spills what Meg Ryan is to tears and laughter: deeply irritating. She is Claire, a high-powered, high-achieving attorney married to Tom, a great big hunk of reticent man played by Jim Caviezel, a "contractor" working unpretentiously away in his carpentry den. But then Tom is picked up by military police; he turns out to be an Awol Marine, wanted for killing El Salvadorean civilians. Claire forgives him his hidden life and defends him herself with the help of a former military attorney played by Morgan Freeman - a lovable, grizzled cynic with a particularly picturesque, non-serious form of alcoholism.

Director Franklin shows none of the pace of his cracking 1992 debut One False Move, and the whole thing is a by-the-numbers trudge. My favourite moment comes when Ashley gets thumped by an intruder in her home, and feistily turns up to work next day with a beautifully styled "black eye", tapering nicely around the socket, no ugly swelling, and in the very next scene it has deliquesced to a gorgeously subtle smudge. This truly is Bruising by L'Oréal.