I first saw this film about twenty years ago and recall being fairly impressed by it. However perceptions change after all that time, and even though I welcomed the opportunity to catch it again the other night on cable, I couldn't help but pick up on a bunch of inconsistencies that brought down my original estimation of the picture.

My biggest problem was with the 'in the scoop' argument by the defense attorney. Insisting that the garbage in which a gun used to commit a series of murders was still considered private property until it was co-mingled with everyone else's garbage in the body of the truck led to Judge Hardin's (Michael Douglas) decision that the evidence thus obtained was inadmissible. However it seems to me, had the contents with the gun been dumped, wouldn't the defense argument have been that there was no way to prove the gun came out of a particular garbage can? Unlikely as that might have been, there's your classic reasonable doubt.

Then, when Monk and Cooms had their case thrown out on a technicality, they reacted as if they actually had been guilty but got away with it. But since it was later revealed that they were not the ones who killed the boy with the bloody sneaker, there was no reason in hindsight for them to have had that particular reaction. And what about that bloody sneaker? If they were not the real killers, what connection did that sneaker in their car have with the story? Absolutely none. So why was it even there in the first place?

With all that, I thought the original premise of the story was pretty good. What decent, law abiding individual hasn't gotten fed up with the convoluted outcomes that result from slimy lawyers working the system to portray criminals as victims? With a little more work this one could have been an effective psychological drama pitting vigilante judges against hardened criminals who got what they deserved, even if it meant circumventing the law. But next time, give us a Judge Hardin that's not so angst driven about a mere technicality like Monk and Cooms being innocent. You know those creeps had to be guilty of something.

The original star chamber was an English court under Henry VII, around 1490, and was established in order to prosecute wealthy and powerful individuals whom the lower courts could never have convicted. In this movie the star chamber is made up of 9 people -- neatly distributed along racial and gender lines -- who have decided to sidestep the "law" in order to administer "justice." Can the law really be so blind as it is shown to be in the three cases we first see Judge Michael Douglas dealing with? If so, then "the law, sir, is a ass," to quote Mr. Bumble.

Douglas gets sucked into the secret panel of justices when a vacancy occurs. A couple of murderers who have gotten off on technicalities are offed once more and terminally by a court-hired assassin. None of the members of the star chamber seem to know who he is, because when it is revealed that they just sentenced two innocent men to death, they have no way of stopping the assassin from carrying out his assignment. I wonder how that works. What I mean is, who is the intermediary between the star chamber and the shooter? How does he get paid? And who pays him? The movie never explains just how this "machinery" works.

Michael Douglas plays a conscience stricken bourgeois, which is his forte. He's pretty good. Probably the best performance is Hal Holbrook's. He's a gray-hair fashionably styled avuncular type of judge who is Douglas's mentor and who calls Douglas "Kiddo," a term I haven't heard since elementary school. He's just about equaled by Yaphet Koto as a detective whose role in the story is unclear. But Koto is always reliable. The greatest FACE in the movie belongs to the guy who plays the criminal, Monk. He gives a first-rate imitation of a nervous wreck. His hair is the kind of growth you might imagine taking place somewhere inside your sewer pipe and his eyeballs dominate the screen.

The plot, however, cops out. It develops a bit of rather challenging ambiguity, then dispenses with it. The bad guys are not simply murderers. One of them combines all the most loathsome crimes that are thinkable. They kidnap young boys, drug them, have them perform in pornographic movies, torture them, then deliberately kill them. If they didn't exist, it would not be necessary to invent them.

By the end, the movie has turned into another action extravaganza taking place in one of those "abandoned warehouses" with chains hanging from the ceiling and holes in the floor. The assassin shows up just in time to save Douglas's gluteus maximi. Then, as he turns the shotgun on Douglas himself, he is shot from behind by Yaphet Koto, there for no particular reason. We don't find out what happens to Douglas or the rest of the star chamber. A lot of things are left hanging.

The only conclusion we can draw from this movie is that the law is a set of rules that people have agreed to live by. That applies to formal law and to the informal star chamber. And since the law is a set of norms drawn up by people, and people always disagree with one another and make mistakes, no law is ever going to be perfectly satisfactory. A compromise is always necessary. It's the kind of natural selection process by which the law evolves, piece by piece. The problem illustrated in this movie is that some people, those who form star chambers for example, are unwilling to compromise because they feel they have a monopoly on justice. They KNOW absolutely what is right and what is wrong so they don't feel it necessary to compromise. "Compromise" is a peculiar word. As Margaret Mead pointed out, it carries different connotations in the USA and Britain. In the UK, a compromise is when each side gets a little something out of the deal. In the USA, when you compromise, you lose.

Amusingly described by one review I read here as "a vigilante movie as it might be envisioned by John Grisham", "The Star Chamber" is a good, solid, entertaining thriller. It misses its chances for greatness due to predictability and a lack of credibility, but while it's playing out, some people, such as this viewer, may not mind too much.

Michael Douglas, in one of his earliest star vehicles, plays Steven Hardin, a young judge who's frustrated by the legal system with which he has to work. Far too often criminal scum are able to escape just punishment due to legal technicalities and savvy defense attorneys. Stevens' cagey, witty mentor Benjamin Caulfield (a marvelous Hal Holbrook) eventually reveals to Steven the method he and some fellow judges have employed to deal with the situation: review old, particularly infuriating cases, make judgments, and pass sentence, utilizing the services of a hired gun.

This is certainly slick stuff, well made technically with efficient direction by Peter Hyams and it's at least smart enough to provoke some debate. For example, what would *you* do: let the 10 guilty men go free or let the one innocent man get executed? It includes some fairly exciting foot chases as well as one brief and decent car chase in a parking garage. The climactic sequence in the abandoned building is appropriately atmospheric. And Michael Smalls' music score is haunting and effective.

Douglas is good in the lead but it's the men in the major supporting parts that truly shine: besides Holbrook, Yaphet Kotto scores as a dedicated detective and James B. Sikking is touching as the father of a murdered child. Sharon Gless has little to do as Stevens' concerned wife. The cast contains an impressive Who's Who roster of character actors, including Joe Regalbuto ('Murphy Brown') and Don Calfa ("The Return of the Living Dead") as a pair of goofy creeps, as well as Jack Kehoe, Larry Hankin, Dick Anthony Williams, David Proval, Robin Gammell, Matthew Faison, Michael Ensign, Jason Bernard, and Robert Costanzo. David Faustino ('Married with Children') plays one of Douglas's kids and Douglas's own real-life mother Diana plays Caulfields' wife; Charles Hallahan ("The Thing", 'Hunter') appears uncredited as police officer Picker.

The movie does move along quite well, getting off to a good start but not concluding as strongly. Still, it's good entertainment for most of the time, and may have people talking about its themes after it's over.

Seven out of 10.