A star-studded thriller that marked the apex of a short-lived craze screams bloody murder on the streaming Top 10

The star-studded legal thriller is always a subgenre that’s well worth checking out if the quality of the end product matches that of the ensemble, even if it’s been over 20 years since heated courtroom debates reached their apex in mainstream popularity when the John Grisham boom was in full swing, with A Time to Kill standing out as the cream of the crop.

While it may not rank as the best-reviewed Grisham adaptation there’s ever been – a distinction that’s been held by underrated box office bomb The Rainmaker for a quarter of a century – it arguably boasts the finest performances across the board from a ridiculously stacked array of major names, which in turn propelled it to a hefty $152 million at the box office.

Samuel L. Jackson stars as a father who avenges the rape of his daughter by murdering the men responsible in cold blood, with Matthew McConaughey’s rookie lawyer tasked to defend him, a task made all the more difficult by the deep-seated racial divides running rampant in Canton, Mississippi.

Also along for the ride are Sandra Bullock, Ashely Judd, Kiefer Sutherland and father Donald, Kevin Spacey, Oliver Platt, Chris Cooper, Kurtwood Smith, and many more on top of that, which is a quite frankly ludicrous volume of top talent. Underlining the legal thriller’s credentials once again, though, A Time to Kill has been named by FlixPatrol as one of the Top 10 most-watched features among HBO Max subscribers in the United States.

Just to think, within the space of 10 years we saw The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Gingerbread Man, and Runaway Jury, but no Grisham novels have ever been brought to the big screen since the latter released in 2003.