Page 4 February 13, 2020 EL SEGUNDO HERALD
Entertainment
Film Review Check It Out
Read by Michael Beck
Roz Templin, Library Assistant,
El Segundo Public Library
John Grisham continues to provide deep
insight into the complex legal systems of our
country and manages to create surprisingly
thrilling and haunting tales, sometimes based
on real cases.
His latest bestseller, The Guardians,
is his take on the many criminal justice
reform organizations that are working tirelessly
on behalf of the imprisoned innocent.
The Innocence Project network is the most
recognized, but the author acknowledges
James McClosky’s nonprofit Centurion
Ministries, the first organization in the world
(established in 1983) dedicated to the vindication
of the wrongly convicted. You may be
interested in taking a look https://centurion.
org/about-us/.
Cullen Post is a lawyer who also happens
to be an Episcopal minister and is
part of Guardian Ministries, a Savannah,
Georgia-based nonprofit that accepts only a
few innocence cases at a time, since there
are only three employees: himself, Vickie
Gourley, the firm’s founder and the highlyregarded
chief litigator Mazy Ruffin. Post’s
friend Frankie is the unoffical partner in this
effort, helping to investigate when needed.
Frankie is an exonerated former prisoner
who feels he owes his life to Guardian and
its lawyers, especially to Post.
Although there is a main case, Grisham
sprinkles in liberally stories of several
convicts, which adds to the suspense and
sparks great emotional response by the
reader. For instance, there is Duke Russell
in Alabama and on death row. Eleven years
earlier, he was framed by a rapist/murderer
who somehow evaded the legal system’s
radar and now Duke is nearing the eleventh
hour of his life. The reader revisits Duke
and his plight throughout the novel while
following imprisoned Quincey Miller, serving
22 years’ time for someone else’s crime in
a Florida penitentiary.
Formerly a client of murdered lawyer
Keith Russo, Quincey was tried and convicted
for Russo’s murder in the little town
of Seabrook, Florida. Quincey writes a
letter to Guardian requesting help and Post
and team decide to take him on. Digging
deeper into the past, Post discovers a twisted
network of police cover-ups, kidnapping,
evidence tampering, money laundering and
the possibility that a drug cartel is behind
it all, and those unnamed people will go to
any lengths to keep Quincey incarcerated.
Racism is an undercurrent, but there are
some twists here rather than the familiar
explorations in other fiction.
I must commend narrator Michael Beck’s
very entertaining characterizations on the
Book on CD. He is a revelation in technique,
shifting his voice into many distinct accents,
making it seem that there are a cast of actors,
rather than just one. He assists author Grisham
in conveying reality and plausibility to the
plot as well as empathy for those people he
has created. I must confess that I had tears
in my eyes several times as I listened while
driving back and forth to work. I think this
material would translate well into film and
certainly a new John Grisham movie would
be a welcome event.
Please stop by the Reference Desk and ask
staff for help in the location of many new
items available in the library. If we don’t
have it, we can assist you in obtaining it from
other libraries in our network. •
Elijah Wood’s Come to Daddy
is a Wild, Twisty Thriller
By Ryan Rojas for cinemacy.com
Now playing in select theaters, the Elijah
Wood-starring Come to Daddy is absolutely
one of the wildest thrillers of this year. Making
it’s premiere at last year’s Tribeca Film
Festival as part of the festival’s midnight category,
the film blew me away for its blend of
humor and crazy, surprising twists and turns.
After receiving a letter from his long estranged
father (Stephen McHattie) asking to
reunite, young electronic artist Norval (Elijah
Wood) agrees to reconnect despite having
been abandoned by him as a child. But when
Norval arrives at a secluded beachside cabin
with the intention of impressing his father
with stories of his LA successes, he finds
his father – grizzled and gruff – curiously
unwilling to reunite. After a few questionably
unsafe moments arise, it feels to Norval that
his dad is actively trying to inflict danger to
him. And that’s when things go from weird,
to outright insane.
At this point, explaining anything further
would ruin nearly all of the fun of the
film, so all I’ll say is that if you’re a fan
of Parasite-level surprises and horror, then
Come To Daddy should definitely be sought
out. Elijah Wood brings a level of wry, dry
humor and darkness to the project, and a
good amount of comedic violence makes
this an unconventionally fun time. We can
expect that Wood is always going to involve
himself in these types of darkly comedic
movies, which we here at Cinemacy fully
stand behind.
If you’re ready to laugh by way of shockingly
gratuitous yet still comically-minded
violence, you will find yourself entertained by
this playfully twisted yet uniquely-envisioned
film that is more than a major accomplishment
from first-time feature filmmaker
Ant Timpson.
93 minutes. Rated R. In Select Theaters
Nationwide + Available on Digital & VOD
on February 7, 2020. •
Douglass
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From all of us at Herald Publications.
The Guardians by John Grisham
Come to Daddy.
Ryan Rojas
The Guardians by John Grisham
Roz Templin
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