[Warning: This review contains spoilers.]

Leave logic at the door. "Double Jeopardy" may not be the worst film of 1999, but with all its ludicrous plot twists, dumb characters, and deadly serious performances, it's certainly my vote for the silliest. We all realize that a certain amount of suspension-of-disbelief is required to enjoy most Hollywood high-concept movies, but the filmmakers here (including the slumming director of the excellent "Driving Miss Daisy") seem to think that if they just plow ahead, you'll buy every inch of it, no questions asked. As if.

Good actress and bad-script-magnet Ashley Judd stars as a wife and mother whose life seems so perfect, you know she's in for it. Her creepy husband, Bruce Greenwood, buys her a huge boat just for the hell of it, and they spend a day on the ocean showing off their tans. Judd wakes up, however, to find her husband gone, the boat (and her robe) covered with blood, and a knife lying out on deck. She picks it up, of course, just as the coast guard conveniently shows up. She is swiftly arrested for Greenwood's murder, and, when convicted, hands her kid over for adoption to her best friend, Annabeth Gish.

Now, anyone who's seen the trailer for this movie knows her husband isn't really dead, so how did he manage to get buckets of his own blood all over the boat? And if it isn't his own blood, did forensics think of doing a test? This would be Major Plot Hole #1. Or, as we'll call them, Plot Canyons.

Judd's hard time actually turns out to be as tough to take as a day spa, what with all the sisterly bonding, workout equipment, and (I kid you not) prison beauty parlor. When she stops getting visits from Gish and her son, Judd tracks Gish down (because you can do lots of statewide detecting from behind bars), calls her, and hears that evil Greenwood in the background. Her prison pal Roma Maffia, an ex-lawyer convicted of murdering her husband (who must have gotten her degree from Plot Contrivance State Law School), tells her to serve her time, then hunt down Greenwood and kill him since, legally, she can't be convicted of the same crime twice.

Plot Canyon #2: Real-life attorney Alan Dershowitz has denounced this premise as preposterous, but since the whole movie hinges on our believing it, let's continue, shall we?

Judd works out with a vengeance, running laps in the rain as another inmate looks on admiringly ("That's sheer hate driving you on") instead of telling her how dumb she looks. Judd serves all of six years for the brutal murder of which she was convicted (Plot Canyon #3) and soon meets up with Tommy Lee Jones (giving the laziest performance of his career), the officer of a halfway house for parolees. Judd, exhibiting all the common sense of a Subway sandwich, tracks down Gish again by breaking into an office to retrieve Gish's employment records. Well, that's one way to bust your parole! Jones drags her onto a ferry to take her back to prison, but Judd escapes by driving, while she is handcuffed to the car, into the water, grabbing Jones' gun, pistol-whipping him, and swimming to shore in all of ten seconds (Plot Canyon #4).

Judd heads to her parents' house, where her mother digs a conveniently stashed wad of cash out of the family garden ("I've always said there was money in tomatoes"), never thinking to ask why her recently paroled, convicted-murderer daughter is on the run. Judd, with an annoyed Jones in hot pursuit, finds Greenwood's old residence, discovers Gish is dead, and again locates her husband in a matter of minutes. Apparently there is no shortage of art dealers, hotel clerks, school administrators, and car salesmen just dying to give out other people's addresses and phone numbers to women in grungy sweatpants (Plot Canyon #5).

Judd gets to New Orleans, where Greenwood is now a prominent citizen who holds charity bachelor auctions (which is what anyone who fakes their own death and changes identities along with their underwear would do) and speaks in the worst southern accent since Aaron Spelling's "Savannah" went off the air. Judd charges a stunning Armani dress to some random woman's hotel account (depending on another store clerk who could care less about checking ID) and easily crashes Greenwood's invitation-only auction (Plot Canyon #6). Jones shows up after Judd lays into Greenwood, but Judd outfoxes him again (with the help of a bartender who doesn't care that she, for all he knows, could be an escaped serial killer) and leads him on a ridiculous umbrella chase through the rain-soaked Naw'leans streets.

Judd orders Greenwood to meet her in a cemetery (where she tells him there will be lots of people around, but oh, no! there aren't), and he bashes her head into a column and buries her in a crypt. She wakes up in a coffin (in a scene directly lifted out of a real thriller, "The Vanishing"), but since Greenwood helpfully puts the gun in the coffin with her (Plot Canyon #7), she shoots her way out and runs into Jones, who decides she is telling the truth and wants to help her. (Is it me, or is Jones strictly here as window-dressing?)

They both show up at Greenwood's place and try to frame him for Judd's murder, just like he did her, but the director quickly abandons this (which would have been the one nifty twist in the movie) in favor of a typical shoot-'em-up ending. Jones then takes Judd to find her son, who is in a Georgia boarding school (are taxpayers paying for all this cross-country travel?), and the requisite tearful reunion ensues. Roll credits. Roll eyes.

Thank heaven that the male writers (it took two of 'em to come up with this, folks) showed an ounce of restraint and didn't have Jones and Judd fall in love, which would have been the biggest Plot Canyon of them all. Oscar-winner Jones will certainly survive this fiasco, which is already a huge hit, but will someone please give the talented, charismatic Judd a real role? One that allows her to smile?

Rating: two turkeys.

Scene to watch for: The scene on the ferry, where Judd not only drives Jones' car into the water but also rams some other hapless passenger's Yugo into the depths.