IronWatcher’s review published on Letterboxd:
Watched on Amazon Prime
The commercial success story of the John Grisham adaptations are a coriosity of the 1990s and early 2000s: Like "The Firm" and "The Pelican Brief", "The Client" became a big box office hit. The concept always remains the same: the penny dreadfuls of their creator, spiced up by legal background knowledge, are equipped with a well-known cast and director and advertised in a glossy look as fat blockbuster cinema. This time (as two years later with "A Time To Kill") Joel Schumacher directed the film and Susan Sarandon as well as the newly made Academy Award winner, my favourite furrow face Tommy Lee Jones could be won for the leading roles.
White-Trash-Kid Mark (in his first film role: the very talented Brad Renfro, who later crashed and died in 2008 at the age of 25 from the consequences of his drug addiction) only wants to teach his little brother in the forest how to smoke and involuntarily becomes the last interlocutor of a life-weary mafia lawyer. He blows his brains out of his skull in front of the children, but not without letting Mark in on a secret. The place where his client, the professional killer Muldano (Anthony LaPaglia), has hidden the body of a senator. From now on, the boy is not only the target of organised crime, but also of the power- and media-hungry public prosecutor Foltrigg, who wants to get him to reveal his knowledge himself by using illegal methods and renouncing all civil rights. He is assisted by the cunning but not very reputable lawyer Reggie Love.
On paper, there is some truth to it and the film even begins quite captivatingly. But after the fast and promising start it quickly becomes clear: This is a prime example of what is often not so ideal in John Grisham films. As far as the judicial background is concerned, the lawyer, who has studied and practiced as such for a long time, naturally knows his business. Everything else is on the level of thriller daily soap. Admittedly, more of a high-quality daily soap, but with the (perhaps) targeted level and the (definitely!) available means, the result is extremely sobering.
The actors are least to blame for the lukewarm end product. Especially Susan Sarandon delivers a really good performance, which makes her the only very credible and authentic character despite the mediocre script. Because of this almost a masterclass performance on her part. Tommy Lee Jones also doesn't cut a bad figure as a sleazy narcissistic prosecutor, but with him or his character the decline of the film begins early. He, like nearly all the other characters here, are such cliché decoys. Terribly exaggerated, almost like in a comic book that doesn't want to be one.
The plot is not a bit better and stumbles from one mediocre tension sequence into the next logic plothole. The whole constellation of the story is actually complete nonsense. Good against actually good (but mean), against evil. Why is the prosecutor and his entourage bullying a little boy - the perfect key witness in a political mafia murder, for him his weight worth in gold - with these methods, LOGICALLY making him refuse to continue cooperating with him under any circumstances. In principle, the two "good" lawyers waste a lot of time with their personal catfight, so that the Mafia gets enough time to either get rid of the evidence or to take the boy out, or ideally both.
In the end they do what would have been the normal and effective procedure after only 10 minutes. Case closed. That's bullshit. It completely takes the tension out of the story, which wouldn't tickle your nerves that much anyway. The fact that Anthony LaPaglia in a net shirt looks more like a bad-tempered hairdresser than a brutal Hitman doesn't make things any better.
I remember liking this movie as a teen and there are indeed stupid movies I grew up with that still slap, but this isn't one of them! And I didn't even notice the sexism deeply rooted in the film at that time. Holy moly!
