Double Jeopardy's innumerable contrivances culminate into one of the most troublesome tag lines in recent memory, "Murder isn't always a crime." (You half expect to find out that Johnnie Cochran was responsible for the marketing campaign.) As all trailers and commercials have taken great pains to spoil for us, Libby's conviction for killing hubby Nick permits her to rub him out for real upon release without punishment. But "double jeopardy" the legal term means something entirely different: one can't be tried for the same specific crime twice; if Libby offs Nick a second time, it is a separate offence, subject to litigation.

Worse, the filmmakers have a lawyer character deliver their homemade definition of "double jeopardy," and an expert back it up as a quizzical chap looks on: "As an ex-law professor, I can assure you she is right," says Tommy Lee Jones' Travis, an alcoholic parole officer. Travis comes to believe in Libby's innocence--after she violates curfew at his halfway house, sinks his car, and totals his replacement car. Now that's patience.

And silly. He's used to dealing with belligerent women, and does so imperiously, so what eventually exempts Libby from his zero-tolerance policy? There's no turning point; in life you can say, "I just had this feeling," but in the movies, we want a physical stimuli to trigger the about-face in our detective hero's attitude.

I could criticize this movie's shoddy writing up and down but the fact remains Double Jeopardy was a box office smash. A rousing postfeminist revenge thriller, Libby's rampage plays into--I'm hypothesizing--deep-seated connubial homicide fantasies (it sentimentalizes the idea of cold-cocking your mate, much in the manner that the Julia Roberts' vehicle Sleeping with the Enemy did). Double Jeopardy has struck a particular chord among women, who develop animalistic bonds with their young. Hell may hath no fury like a Libby scorned, but the goal of her rampage is to regain custody of her kid, who is in danger, as far as the audience is concerned, of being corrupted in his formative years by a cowardly father.

We wonder in the opening scenes how someone so obviously intelligent as Libby could not initially see her spouse for the weasel he is, but the catch-22 is, if Bruce Greenwood had not invested the role with such an oily repulsion from the start, why would we want to see him dead in act three? Director Bruce Beresford, whose credits run the gamut from magnificent to dreadful, does not have subtlety as his strong suit, though he runs an efficient operation and steers Double Jeopardy down the most crowd-pleasing roads. A Hitchcockian sequence involving a car, a ferry, and a handcuffed Libby is gleefully suspenseful.

Paramount's Double Jeopardy DVD features another in a long line of gorgeous anamorphic transfers. The New Orleans scenery, which has the clarity and intensity of a postcard, will especially please those new to the format. Flesh tones are accurate and black level is top notch, always solid yet never interfering with shadow detail. Sporadic negative dirt (during second unit photography, such as establishing shots of a cursed boat, The Morning Star) hardly downgrades my opinion of the image, which is letterboxed at 2.35:1.

The 5.1 Dolby Digital mix is undistinguished, save some nice foley work in the rears. What qualifies as action, such as the aforementioned ferry set piece, gets the subwoofer talking, but this soundtrack, while not disappointing in the slightest, is rarely beyond serviceable due to the quiet nature of the film. (A Dolby Surround mix is also included.) Extras include an EPK (billed as a "behind-the-scenes featurette") plus Double Jeopardy's appetizing trailer.-Bill Chambers