The Gingerbread Man (1998) on Netflix
Rick Magruder, a Savannah attorney, begins an affair with Mallory Doss. When her father Dixon threatens her, Rick steps in and has Dixon taken into custody.
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- IMDb5.7/1012,270 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes59%
Trailer
Plot summary
Rick Magruder is an attorney in Savannah, Georgia. After a party held by his firm, waitress Mallory Doss finds her car gone; Rick drives her home, and the car is sitting there, seemingly left by her father, Dixon. Mallory says Dixon is abusive, and the two spend the night together. When Mallory's cat is found killed, she asks Rick to shield her from Dixon. Rick brings in his associate Lois Harlan and the investigator Clyde Pell, and Dixon is taken into custody.
Cast
- Troy Byeras Konnie Dugan (as Troy Beyer)
- Julia Ryder Perceas Cassandra (as Julia R. Perce)
Show all 20 cast
- Rosemary Newcottas Dr. Bernice Sampson
- Michelle Benjamin Cooperas Principal (as Michelle Benjamin-Cooper)
- Walter Hartridgeas Edmund Hess
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Gingerbread Man (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was intended to open in the fall of 1997 but was delayed after a test screening reportedly went poorly, and Polygram Films then brought in an outsider to re-edit it without informing Altman, claiming his version "lacked tension and suffered from an inappropriate music score".
- Years later Altman told interviewer Ray Pride that the studio's treatment of the film was criminal, and that the man running Polygram Films was so angry with him that he told his staff, "I want that movie killed."
- Polygram backed down when their re-edited version tested worse than Altman's in a preview; the studio was also upset that Altman had completely rewritten Grisham's script so that it was more critical about lawyers.
- The publicized squabble between the studio and the filmmaker got so bad that at one point Altman wanted his own name taken off the film.
- Altman wanted to work with Kenneth Branagh, but only on one condition, as he told him: "If we can fool the audience by not making you the hero, by making you flawed."
- In July 1996 Luis Mandoki was announced as director with Annette Bening in the female lead and filming planned for Memphis, Tennessee, but Bening had to drop out when she fell pregnant and Mandoki departed shortly afterwards.
- The film was Robert Downey Jr.'s first acting role after a 1996 drug arrest, along with Two Girls and a Guy, and it has been said that Downey "didn't even read the script" when he accepted the role.
- The 1998 American legal thriller was directed by Robert Altman and based not on a published novel but on a discarded John Grisham manuscript.
