Il cliente

Back in 1994, I read this book and just like other John Grisham's novels, with the exception of "The Pelican Brief", once I started reading, I couldn't put it down.

Director Joel Schumacher and Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman did an excellent job keeping the movie within the storyline without doing a horrible "hatchet job" most do to novels.

In addition, there was an excellent flow to the movie. It kept moving along; There wasn't very many slow moments in it and it kept me on the edge of my seat.

The casting was great as well. I liked Susan Sarandon as Reggie Love, Brad Renfro as Mark Sway, Tommy Lee Jones was a perfect fit as the "Revered" Roy Foltrigg. Will Patton as Sergent Hardy, was an excellent sleezy and conniving officer.

When I saw Anthony LaPaglia as Barry "The Blade" Muldano, I didn't envision the greasy sleezeball he portrayed, but someone more tougher or perhaps more thuggish. But Anthony LaPaglia fit just fine.

This is a movie worth renting.

"The Client" is an enjoyable and well executed thriller overall. While the directing, script and overall product are far from amazing and sometimes quite bland, the Oscar level performances compensate for the easily over-seeable flaws.

Perhaps the child of the title, Brad Renfro, can be annoying in parts he gives a decent enough performance nonetheless. Too bad about the drinks and drugs problem he has today. Susan Sarandon gives another terrific performance, this time as an alcoholic lawyer. Tommy Lee Jones' character doesn't have much to do with the plot but he's a welcome addition to the film, even though.

While it is easy to find fault with the film it's easier to just sit back and enjoy it. I chose the latter so I thought it was a good, if not spectacular movie overall. 6.8/10.

Mark Sway is a real hero here, although he is not only a mere child, but a disadvantaged child in the middle of adult power structures breathtaking in their deviousness and casual cruelty. The theme of youngsters forced by circumstances into adult roles and responsibilities, particularly in being more level-headed and mature than their parent(s) has become as strikingly common in contemporary literature as it was strikingly uncommon until about a generation ago. But there are ample parallels to real life in pre-Romantic history. It is really our modern assumptions of prolonged childhood and adolescence which are abnormal in the fuller perspective of human experience. Aren't we on the verge of these concepts' retreating from the apogees to which western culture pushed them in the 19th and early 20th centuries?

If so, this film is on the cusp of the trend. Yet it might never have worked but for the director's good fortune in locating Brad Renfro for the lead role. What a find! His earthy, protean spunk and obliviousness to any cute brown-nosing towards his elders, simply because they are elders, make him entirely convincing in the part. He is, I hope, on his way to being a great actor, but perhaps it will continue to be this film which shows his freshness most clearly.

Not that it isn't very taut cinema in other regards. The build up of drama in the opening scenes is superb, with acting, cinematography, and the score all combining to provide a seamless experience. As one critic put it, it starts like a house afire, and the fire never goes out. This is a film one can see again and again, noticing additional fine touches each time.

I saw The Client in the cinema when it was all the ralge to go to the cinema. I thought The Firm was better, but still, The Client doesn't necessarily disappoint. But I expected more from a cinematic experience. The Client could have been a more than decent TV film I guess.

"The Client" is one of the better big-screen adaptations of a John Grisham novel and it's largely down to a terrific cast. some of who weren't even 'names' at the time. The plot is fairly typical Grisham, (a witness to a killing needs to be protected from the killers), but the twist here is that the killing was a suicide, the victim a mob lawyer who blurted out where the body was hidden before blowing his brains out and the witness, an eleven year old street-wise kid.

It's a decent thriller plot and it does make for an entertaining picture but it's given quite a lift by a whole host of superb actors with Susan Sarandon taking the lioness' share of the honors, (she won the BAFTA), as the hard-nosed lawyer the kid hires. Other lawyers determined to bring down the mob include Tommy Lee Jones, J.T, Walsh, Bradley Whitford and Anthony Heald while Anthony La Paglia is the principal bad guy and there's a very nice supporting performance from the great Will Patton as the kind of policeman you're not sure if you can trust or not. Brad Renfro is the kid. Unfortunately, the director was Joel Schmuacher who doesn't bring a lot of imagination to the party but keeps things moving along in predictable fashion. A better director might have turned this into a classic.