As long as there are movies with disgruntled, sardonic law enforcement officers, there will be roles for Tommy Lee Jones. As sure as asbestos will give you cancer, Jones will be forced to hunt down fugitives. Sure enough, they will be innocent. When will someone let this man hunt down a person who is actually guilty?

Jones is at it again, playing a disgruntled, sardonic law enforcement officer, hunting an innocent person. Mix in a breathtaking escape from a car, a cross-country manhunt and some snappy dialogue to get a movie that could easily be mislabeled another formulaic sequel to The Fugitive . Not so fast, though.

Double Jeopardy is a new movie from director Bruce Beresford, the man behind such nail-biting thrillers as Tender Mercies and Driving Mrs. Daisy. Action-thrillers are not his specialty, but female drama is. To that end, Ashley Judd plays the main character and the target of Jones' dry wit and bloodhound senses.

Libby Parsons (Judd) lives a lush life with a rich husband and a young son. While on a sailing excursion with her husband, Nick (Bruce Greenwood), she wakes up in the middle of the night soaked in blood, with Nick no where to be found. Libby is charged, convicted and imprisoned for his murder, leaving her young son in the care of Angie (Annabeth Gish), a family friend. Angie disappears, and Libby is forced to track her down from inside prison. Upon finding her friend, she learns that Nick is not only alive, but also living with Angie and her son.

Here is the movie's creative hook. While in prison, Parsons learns about double jeopardy, a section of the Fifth Amendment that forbids anyone to be tried twice for the same crime. Because she has already been convicted of killing Nick, she could not be tried again if she tracked him down and killed him for real.

This opportunity comes six years later, when she is paroled and sent to a halfway house for ex-cons, which is run with an iron-fist by Lehman (Jones), her parole officer. Libby violates probation and begins her hunt for Nick, while Jones, in true Fugitive mode, nips at her heels the whole time.

Judd is in fine form as Libby, running a gamut of emotion from sorrow to shock to seething rage. Her crying jags sound forced and phony, but her intelligence and strength (both physical and emotional) make her more interesting than a typical thriller heroine.

Jones is good, but he could play this role in his sleep by now. The surprise is Greenwood, who makes Nick equally charming and unrepentant; making him intriguing, easily detestable and immensely mesmerizing.

The story has its ups-and-downs, though. The concept is great and a handful of scenes are skillfully handled by cast and crew alike, particularly an auction scene where Nick is on the block.

Double Jeopardy is an action-thriller and therefore destined to be relatively predictable. The supporting characters are nothing more than chunks of helpful information for Libby, with faces and names that are afterthoughts. Some of the situations and character logic is contrived. The graveyard confrontation between Libby and Nick is stupefying on many levels, not to mention that it's ripped off the great Dutch thriller, The Vanishing, (which has an inferior American remake by the same name).

A crafty concept and some good acting from the three leads helps Double Jeopardy survive its predictable plotting and make it a multi-plex trip worthy of your $4.

For more cons-on-the-run fun, check out Jones' original turn as a sardonic U.S. Marshal in The Fugitive or the hilarious exploits of Robert DeNiro as a bounty hunter in Midnight Run.