When successful lawyer Claire Kubik's world is turned upside when she discovers her husband is not Tom Kubik but has a very dark past and is Ron Chapman who is wanted for murder of Latin American villagers when he was in the Marines.
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High Crimes starts in a very impressive manner as it shows us Claire and Tom a happily married couple who are trying for a baby, everything seems to be going well for her with this and they are very much in love. It wasn't going to last much longer like that when Tom is revealed to be Ron Chapman a wanted murderer from when he was in the Marines. He had somehow managed to get a new identity and kept his past from Claire.
Being a lawyer and not accepting that her loving husband was capable of such crimes she enlists the help of Charles W. Grimes to take on the case as he has experience within the military justice system, which does not work the same as for civilians. Would he actually be up for the case though that is probably one of the biggest questions. He had seen better days and did not really have a lot of money or resources anymore, not that he was overly bothered by this. You could not fault Claire though and her passion to protect the man she was in love with.
Tom/Ron claims he is innocent and blames it on another officer although no one can really back up the story considering all of the marines who witnessed what happened had all died or been killed off before the trial. Some of which was rather suspicious and it builds up quite nicely, although with this the supposed big twist was actually a little bit obvious early on which was a shame really as it was a good change.
I think if the twist had not been so obvious then this would have been a four star film, the performances were good with Ashley Judd easily being the standout performance. She really did have some varied films during the late 90s and early 00s, including a few with Morgan Freeman! He is his usual self which means a good performance, we wouldn't really expect anything less from him though would we. Jim Caviezel was impressive in his double role really with being two different characters in one. Adam Scott and Amanda Peet were good in the smaller supporting roles and the sub plot between them might have actually been better as part of the main plot.