The Client Blu-ray Review
"Stop Calling Me the Child!"
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, November 16, 2012
The Client is three quarters of a great movie, but that three quarters is enough to elevate it above
every film adapted to date from the legal thrillers of John Grisham. A prolific author of
airplane reading, Grisham writes improbable potboilers peopled by two-dimensional characters and
decorated with just enough legalese and surface decor to lend the whole enterprise an air of
authenticity. But take the stories from page to screen, and their true nature is revealed: They are
pre-fab scripts, waiting for Hollywood to fit tab "A" into slot "B" and insert big star "C" guided by
established director "D".
The Firm (1993) succeeded by following the template with
Tom Cruise directed by Sydney
Pollack. Never mind that the titular law firm never once looked or behaved credibly, because
Pollack understood that the legal rigamarole didn't matter, as long as his star was in danger. Then
Alan Pakula's
The Pelican Brief (1993) put Julia
Roberts and Denzel Washington at the mercy of
a sinister D.C. establishment with an oil billionaire for a client. Forget the fact that sleek
Washington firms make more money by
not assassinating Supreme Court Justices, murdering
FBI counsel or detonating reporters in their cars, because Pakula made sure that Roberts and
Washington looked good while running for their lives.
But something different happened with
The Client when it was handed to Joel Schumacher, who
was just a year away from taking over Tim Burton's
Batman franchise (and arguably ruining it
forever). Schumacher's talent has always vacillated between the earnest and the frivolous, and
The Client caught him in a serious phase. With a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman (
A Beautiful
Mind) and Robert Getchell (
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore), this particular Grisham film
morphed from a thriller into a character study. All of a sudden, Grisham acquired depth. The
stellar cast was anchored by Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon (in a justly Oscar-nominated
performance) and the newly discovered Brad Renfro, whose exceptional work here should not be
clouded by the later problems with substance abuse that eventually led to his death.
Mark and Ricky Sway (Renfro and David Speck) are the sons of a single working mom, Dianne
(Mary-Louise Parker), who would be considered by many to be "trailer trash". Indeed, the family
lives in a trailer in Memphis. One day when the brothers are out in the woods smoking their
mother's cigarettes, they witness the suicide of a despairing criminal lawyer, Jerome "Romey"
Clifford (Walter Olkiewicz). It's a tense, sharply edited and smartly directed sequence, because it
generates suspense, while also speaking volumes about the relationship between the two
brothers. The relationship is essential to everything Mark does for the rest of the film.
Ricky, the younger brother, is so traumatized by Romey's suicide that he withdraws into a coma-like trance. Memphis police and FBI lock down the
scene, because Romey was a mob lawyer,
whose client, "Barry the Blade" Muldano (Anthony LaPaglia), is the chief suspect in the
disappearance and presumed murder of Louisiana Senator Boyd Boyette. The flamboyant U.S.
Attorney in New Orleans, "Reverend Roy" Foltrigg (Jones), was hoping to "flip" Romey into
testifying against his client, but whatever Romey knew died with him—unless he told someone before
he put a bullet through his head. An insinuating Memphis cop, Sgt. Hardy (Will Patton), thinks
that Mark Sway learned a lot more from Romey than he's letting on. A local FBI man, McThune
(J.T. Walsh), agrees.
As Ricky Sway lies in a hospital bed, and his doctor (William H. Macy) doses Dianne Sway with
valium to prevent a nervous collapse, Sgt. Hardy intimidates Mark with tales of the fearsome
Reverend Roy and "kid size" electric chairs. But Hardy achieves the opposite effect: Mark runs
out of the hospital looking for a lawyer. Clutching the address of an ambulance chaser he spotted
hustling an accident victim in the lobby, Mark runs into a nearby building and blunders into the
office of Reggie Love (Sarandon). A classic Grisham underdog, Reggie has only been in practice
a few years, but together with her clerk, Clint (Anthony Edwards), she's won "more 'n' I lost".
Despite a rocky start, Mark has found a lawyer.
When Reggie first marches into a conference room to confront McThune, Reverend Roy and his
entourage (an assistant U.S. attorney (Bradley Whitford), a New Orleans FBI man (Anthony
Heald) and a personal assistant (William Sanderson)), the scene exemplifies what makes
The
Client's legal sequences compelling. There's strategic maneuvering between the two sides, but
the real drama is the interplay of personalities, as Reggie switches between Southern lady and
professional shark, while the men in the room go from Confederate gentlemen to bad boys caught
with their hands in the cookie jar.
The same dynamic continues as Reverend Roy and his minions tighten the screws on Reggie and
Mark, threatening, cajoling, fabricating grounds for putting Mark in custody, and finally hauling
him before Judge Harry Roosevelt (Ossie Davis) so that they can examine him under oath. The
issue becomes less a matter of catching criminals than about Mark sticking to his principles
without violating his promise to Reggie not to lie. (The solution is inventive, elegant and
technically accurate.) Reverend Roy isn't above trying to sabotage Reggie's relationship with her
client by slipping Mark unflattering details about Reggie's past.
At regular intervals, the crime story has to be serviced; so we check in with Barry the Blade and
his boss and uncle, Johnny Sulari (Ron Dean), who is none too pleased with Barry. Uncle Johnny
dispatches a thug named Gronke (Kim Coates) to intimidate Mark (and more, if necessary), but
these scenes of mob plotting and coercion, which would normally be the meat of the story, end
up being the filler. Schumacher and his editor, Robert Brown (who had cut
The Lost Boys,
Flatliners and
Dying Young for the director), wisely speed through them as fast as possible to get
back to the heart of the film, which is the growing relationship between Reggie and young Mark.
Eventually, though, the rickety frame that is the downfall of every Grisham-based thriller can no
longer be concealed. Having beaten back all of Reverend Roy's attacks, Reggie and Mark are in
an ideal position to make a deal, and Reggie even lays out how to do it: Go to Reverend Roy and
insist on immunity for Mark and witness protection for him and his family in exchange for what
Romey told him, which is where to find the body of Barry the Blade's victim, the late Senator
Boyette. But a funny thing always happens with Grisham's heroes. In the crunch, they never
behave like lawyers; they always have to get out of the office and turn into action stars. So
Reggie lets Mark talk her into following the insane course of
confirming the body's location,
which there's no need to do, except that it puts both lawyer and client into jeopardy and turns
the last part of of
The Client into a series of low-key stunts and escapes. You can actually feel the
film deflating as it downshifts into the mundane routine of Confronting the Bad Guy (which turns
out to be not much of a confrontation after all). An extended scene between Reggie and Reverend
Roy when they finally meet to strike a deal provides a welcome return to form, but by then the
spell has been broken.
