Year Released: 1994
Directed by: : Joel Schumacher
Starring: Brad Renfro, Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones, Mary-Louise Parker, Anthony LaPaglia
(PG-13, 120 min.)
Genre: Drama, Legal Thriller

“No good deed goes unpunished.” – attributed to Oscar Wilde

The big names may get top billing (except here), but the kid is the core. Just as in Mark Twain and Steven Spielberg, he knows the truth even if he wraps it up in a package of lies to survive.

And that is none too easy, what with the FBI and the mob after him. Not to mention the suicidal sleazy mob lawyer who decides to bring the kid trying to save him along for his ride to dusty death.

Except it’s not really dusty, more a watery grave after the old hose fastened to the exhaust pipe fails when Mark (a feisty Brad Renfro) decides to play the Good Samaritan.

A bit of a change of pace for the someone who steals his mother’s cigarettes and then sneaks out of the house with his little brother in tow to smoke them in the woods. But Mark is is as compelled to save this triple loser as he is to smoke those purloined cigarettes.

The film owes much of its authenticity and humor to John Grisham, whose book is its basis. The Mississippi native practiced law and served in the state legislature before turning his hand to writing, and his insights into both those earlier professions and their foibles define his novels.

The Client is one of the lesser-known Grisham works, but one of his very best. The characters come to life here instead of being intriguing props exposing societal ills, bringing up Different Drummer rule #6. (Hey, Gibbs isn’t the only one who can have them.)

“Different Drummer feels manipulated when a film is merely a vehicle for political, social, or religious indoctrination.”

Unlike a lot of the socially conscious Grisham films, The Client is free of indoctrination, and we laugh as much at the preening and politically ambitious US attorney, “Reverend” Roy Foltrigg (Tommy Lee Jones) as we do the bumbling wannabe mobster Barry the Blade Muldano, played a very young and thin Anthony LaPaglia before he turned to finding missing persons in “Without a Trace.” Here he is more into creating them and using whatever little ingenuity he possesses to hide their remains.

And that is a crucial point in the film. Who knows where a certain body in question is buried? Muldano’s sleazy lawyer does, or did, until he offed himself, not wanting to wait around for Barry the Blade to do it.

But does Mark know? That is the deadly question and the 11-year-old is smart enough to keep his mouth shut, which gets more and more difficult as he is squeezed between the mafia guys’ threats and the more civilized ones from U.S. Attorney Foltrigg.

That’s where Susan Sarandon’s inexperienced new lawyer Reggie Love comes in. She’s had some hard knocks in her life, just as Mark has, and both are as wily as Foltrigg:

Reggie: I have been sober for three years.
Mark: Yeah right, that's what all the drunks say, how they're gonna get sober and all. They even say they love you but they don't. And then they come home wasted and beat on you and your mother so bad that you gotta hit 'em in the face with a baseball bat!”

Foltrigg is no saint either, as he openly lies to Mark to get information out of him:

Foltrigg: You know that the FBI puts kids in jail if they break the law? And if a kid has been involved in a murder they got a special little kid-sized electric chair. I saw it once. It was about so high. When somebody gets electrocuted, the current is so strong it makes the blood in the veins boil. Fries you like a piece of bacon.

But he does not so easily intimidate Mark:

Mark: You’re the only pig here.

Maybe one reason Mark is so good in his role is because …

At the time of filming, author John Grisham had casting approval over all film adaptations of his work, and specified that "no professional child actors in Hollywood" be cast as Mark Sway. He felt that the film wouldn't work with a well-known child actor (sporting a phony accent) in the role and that by casting an unknown in the part (preferably from the Memphis area, where the story is set) the film's credibility wouldn't be compromised. Brad Renfro,a native of Knoxville, Tennessee beat out thousands of actors for the role, including Macaulay Culkin. –IMBD Trivia

Yes, the film does get a bit unhinged near the end. As Roger Ebert so aptly puts it,

… in the last hour the action wanders less convincingly into Hardy Boys antics where the kid and his lawyer turn into amateur sleuths and risk their lives to solve the big case.

Still The Client is one of Grisham’s best. The focus on eleven-year-old Mark, who gives as good as he gets from Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon, marks it apart. It tugs at us emotionally, taking us to the edge of sentimentality, and then steps back before vertigo plunges us to the depths.

Not many other courtroom dramas can do this. Almost up there with Anatomy of a Murder and The Verdict.

A must see and indeed well worth watching again.

–Kathy Borich
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Trailer

Film-Loving Foodie

The bad guys in this film (if you eliminate the sort of baddie Tommy Lee Jones’ U.S. Attorney Roy Foltrigg) operate out of New Orleans. Barry the Blade Muldano and his mafia boss uncle, Johnny Sulari, are bugged at the famous Antoine’s there, established in 1840, New Orleans’ oldest restaurant.