Watched this movie because it featured Tom Berenger only to find out he only had a supporting role. He should have bypassed this one. The plot is not only bizarre it is quite unrealistic. If one believes that every thing is preordained, then that is the only way the plot would have worked, that the characters had no control over their lives. It begins absurdly. No attorney would ever do what Gooding did - sell out his client, no matter how heinous the client is. A client places his or her trust in the attorney and it is unconscionable for an attorney to violate that trust unless the client reveals to the attorney he is going to commit a crime. Gooding was framed in the story. The frame would only work if Gooding decided to assume authorship of the manuscript of the "dead" man. Many people would not have done that so why would anyone go to all the effort of writing the book on the tenuous assumption that Gooding would assume authorship and in the process destroy the original manuscript? Another example was when Gooding picked up the automatic that the murderer had used to kill Beringer. The script at that point had the killer look at Gooding and say you are holding the gun, implying that Gooding's fingerprints were on the gun. What the screen writer forgot was that Gooding had been a good defense attorney and thus would have known that his hands had no gun powder residue on them but that the killer had gun powder residue from the automatic on his hands. Gooding would have gone free but instead the script had him kill the villain which put gun powder residue on Gooding's hands. With that type of evidence it was most unrealistic to expect that a jury would have acquitted Gooding. Gooding seemed more often than not to mouth his dialog. He was anything but convincing in this role. They should have left this movie in the can.