Here we have Keanu Reeves’s second appearance as an unconvincing attorney of questionable moral character scrutinizing the validity of rape accusations. And, boy, is this sub-genre a lot less fun without Al Pacino as satan!

The Whole Truth is stealing from everywhere. From the outset, it feels like the filmmakers wanted to make a John Grisham adaptation, but decided they didn’t want to pay the man. It’s adorned itself with indistinct Southern accents and a protagonist who’s going to take off his suit-jacket, roll up his white button-up, and get the job done.

But it’s not just Grisham they rob. Clearly, the ending is meant to be a shameless riff on Primal Fear, but it’s more like the end of the 2009 remake of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt—something that is so remarkably dumb that you can’t help but be a little in awe of it.

I picked up something of an addiction to the grand courtroom genre about five years ago now. With this film, I’ve collected 138 of these films and watched them. What I notice is that the rules of conduct in the courtroom are entirely shapeless in movies. Whether a lawyer or witness is allowed to do something is determined only by what the plot dictates at any given time. We know this, but even so there’s a line there for each of us. I think The Whole Truth crosses that line for everyone on Earth.

In spite of this characteristic of the genre, I’ve found a stable stream of cinematic joy from watching movies tackle the justice system. It’s a conceit that allows for big moments from the confines of a little room from nothing but dialogue. Some of the benchmarks of the genre are textbook instruction in where to place the camera when filming dialogue. It’s a genre that I rarely find to be truly dull, even when it’s derivative. The only times it goes wrong is when a film is too moralistic or conversely, when its moral compass is askew. What we find in The Whole Truth is worse still: when a film swings for the fences with no sense to get it there.

Even still, I ought to be able to derive a bit of pleasure from a film like this, but its contents stirred something in me. Earlier this year I was upset (triggered, you could say) by the inclusion of a “trigger warning” at the beginning of not one, but two, of the five films up for Best Documentary Feature at the 97th Academy Awards.

I’ve always interpreted such things as crass virtue signaling done by content creators done purely to show how compassionate they are. But it’s one thing to do it at the start of a YouTube video and another thing entirely at the start of a film, because films have already had these for decades, they were just called something else: content warnings. So, because the nomenclature on this subject has already been set in film, it’s a far more egregious act to use this language preceding it than an online platform. That wasn’t the only reason I was worried by the trend of award-nominated documentaries mimicking online content, but it was a piece of it.

I say this all because I’m grappling with the question of whether I could have used one of these content warnings myself. I don’t read what films are about before I watch them and that strategy has suited me well-enough, but this one I think I would have liked to have known beforehand. Like the character in this film, my brother is currently enmeshed in the legal system for parricide. Just like in this film, the victim was a unapologetic abuser who “said vile things.”

But, you know, I realized something watching this film. Normally, we try to be diligent in our principles and say that if a film is delving into some sensitive subject matter it should do so with care and respect for it because there are those who have actually lived it. Well, I actually lived this film more or less and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest that the film handles its material with the same reverence a bird does its shit.

Just like how a seven-year-old can look at a film and tell that it’s not real life, I’m fully aware that the people writing this have not lived this, nor do I think they should be required to in order to be granted license to make the film. I just think their movie fucking sucks.