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``A Time to Kill,'' based on the first novel by John Grisham, is a skillfully constructed morality play that pushes all the right buttons and arrives at all the right conclusions. It begins with the brutal rape of a 10-year-old black girl by two rednecks in a pickup truck. The girl's father kills the rapists in cold blood on their way to a court hearing and cripples a deputy in the process. The local white liberal lawyer agrees to defend him. The Klan plots to gain revenge. Good of course triumphs--but we'll get back to that in a moment.

I was absorbed by ``A Time to Kill,'' and found the performances strong and convincing, especially the work by Samuel L. Jackson as Carl Lee Hailey, the avenging father, and Matthew McConaughey as Jake Brigance, the lawyer. This is the best of the film versions of Grisham novels, I think, and it has been directed with skill by Joel Schumacher.

But as I watched the film, other thoughts intruded. Grisham recently attacked director Oliver Stone, alleging that Stone's ``Natural Born Killers'' inspired drugged-out creeps to murder a friend of Grisham's. Stone should be sued by the victim's family, Grisham said, offering the theory that ``NBK'' was to blame under product-liability laws.

Well, Grisham is a lawyer, and lawyers exist to file suits. But one might reasonably ask whether the creeps would have committed the murder without taking the drugs. One might also ask if Grisham forfeits his right to moral superiority by including a subplot in ``A Time to Kill'' that gives the Ku Klux Klan prominence and a certain degenerate glamor. Yes, Klan members are the villains. But to a twisted mind, their secret meetings and corn-pone rituals might be appealing.

However, if you leave out everything that might inspire a nut, you don't have a movie left--or a free society, either. Artists cannot hold themselves hostage to the possibility that defectives might misuse their work. Grisham...