Movie Review: THE CLIENT
John Grisham is one of the most boring writers of all time— he has a formula, as most best selling authors do, and he plugs in different characters and hits send. So I knew what I was getting into when I signed up for this one. It’s nobody’s fault but my own.
THE CLIENT (1994) Directed by Joel Schumacher
All right stay with me— two poor kids who live with their single mother in a trailer park in the South decide to steal a couple of smokes from her pocket book and then, against her sage advice, run deep into the woods to light ‘em up. With the old wrong place at the wrong time a car pulls up and inside is the Cable installer who chases Kramer across rooftops in SEINFELD only this time he’s not a cable installer— he’s a mob lawyer and he’s been drinking and he’s decided to kill himself, first by running a tube from his exhaust pipe into the car and just in case that doesn’t work he’s also got a .38 revolver sitting next to him and a ⅓ down bottle of whiskey.
The kids see what he’s doing and try to help by stealthily pulling the tube out of the exhaust in a scene that goes on a bit long the lawyer grabs the older kid and his way of saying thank you is to drag the kid into the car with him and decide that he will join him on his trip to the afterlife. The Mob Lawyer/Cable Installer tells the kid things the kid shouldn’t even be able to comprehend but it’s enough to get him in trouble with the Mob if ever he gets out of this prickly situation (spoiler alert: he does).
The older brother escapes the car grabs the younger brother who has seen too much and is now in a fetal position on the ground and they run off with the lawyer hot on their trail with the .38 clutched in his chubby fingers. He’s as bad at chasing the kids as he was chasing Kramer so he gives up, not knowing the kids are no more than three feet away from him hiding in a ditch when he puts a slug into his own head— causing Number Two son to further devolve into his trauma state.
That’s a shame because the kid who played the younger brother was far more engaging than the older brother who’s got his poor kid attitude and a lot of anger. The younger brother has a better agent because he spends ¾ of the movie in a coma while his parents cash his paycheck and buy a new house.
All right so lets focus here— the kid needs a lawyer so he goes to a flop house type of office building filled with seedy lawyers and he comes across the law offices of Susan Sarandon and her law clerk Anthony Edwards. Anthony Edwards is a FAR better actor than Sarandon but that would lose the Grisham formula because our female attorney is a former drug addict and alcoholic who is turning her life around and starting her law career. She doesn’t have a lot of cases under her belt which is too bad because she’s about to go up against Tommy Lee Jones who is a seasoned publicity craving attorney (he might be a district attorney but I don’t think so because they don’t travel in limos and it really doesn’t matter— he’s the opposing counsel and he’s so much better than Sarandon and we know this because everyone tells us), only this is a John Grisham story— so the righteous judge will see right through him and side with his former student Sarandon to even the score.
Blah blah blah.
If you like John Grisham that’s great. As my grandmother used to say “At least they’re reading” but to me it’s like saying a morbidly obese person eating box after box of Ding Dong’s ™ “at least they’re eating”. It’s garbage in and its garbage out. The story is listed as “suspense” but it’s anything but because we know the social justice warriors will win and the big bad successful people will lose and we’ll all cheer the drug addict who has turned her life around.
Also in the cast is the white haired guy who always plays a tough Chicago Detective in movies like THE FUGITIVE and THE DARK KNIGHT only this time h’s playing a tough gangster type fellow. His “nephew” is played by a Jewish Kid from New Jersey who struggles with his Louisana accent and dresses like he spent the night at the Roxbury— he’s so cartoonishly bad as a mob enforcer it’s hard to do anything but laugh when he tries to act threatening.
My favorite scene in this whole travesty of time wasting was a boat house setup next to a “crazy right winger gun nut” who has signs all over his yard that trespassers will be shot— and I’m talking BIG signs, then when said gun nut has to defend his property he runs inside screaming call the police after they return fire.
You could stop this movie halfway— switch over to a good movie— and I guarantee you could write the ending and you’d end up with a better movie than this predictable preachy boring movie.
I should have known to jump off an Akiva Goldsmith movie so it’s nobody’s fault but my own that I put this on.
GRADE: D
