THE CLIENT
A film review by Eric Mankin
Copyright 1994 Eric Mankin
The third, and by far the most successful translation of a John Grisham legal suspense novel to film. A tough little trailer park pre-teen named Mark Sway (Brad Refro) happens upon the suicide of a mafia attorney and is almost instantly caught between mob hitmen and a remorseless federal prosecutor (Tommy Lee Jones). Mark shrewdly hires himself a lawyer--and is lucky enough to get Reggie Love (Susan Sarandon), a woman who has lost so much by surrender that she is now willing to risk everything to win big.
The story is at bottom just as hokey and nearly as piously legalistic as THE FIRM and THE PELICAN BRIEF, but director Joel Schumacher cannily finds the best in it. He finesses the violence, putting all of it off camera, and concentrates instead on character and relationships, specifically the one between Mark and his damaged but utterly determined lawyer Reggie--a part that Sarandon seizes with joyful abandon.
The film, particularly the first two-thirds, is filled with wonderful setpieces: the opening confrontation with the fat, suicidal lawyer (Walter Olkewicz) in his car; Mark's visit to a decrepit roach motel of an office building, full of shady shysters; almost every scene with Jones as U.S attorney "Reverend" Roy Foltrigg directing his supporting crew of worried yes-men; and every confrontation between Sarandon and Jones. (Jones essentially clones his character from "The Fugitive"--and is every bit as much fun to watch as he was in that film.)
The director and screenwriters (Akiva Goldsman and Robert Getchell) eventually get into trouble following the novel too faithfully. All those threats and atmospherics eventually have to pay off in some kind of action scenes--and Grisham's books seem to have the least resourceful assassins in the genre. The letdown, however, is almost welcome. In what must be the most over-pyroed, over-stunted year in the history of the medium, Schumacher sticks with people instead of falls and explosions, and makes it work.
Eric Mankin
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