Le client

"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.

Somehow the plot holes didn't seem so glaring in Grisham's novel. Anyway, this is one of Susan Sarandon's many excellent performances. And Tommy Lee Jones gleefully chews the scenery here. You might think he is overacting, but he is really playing a character that comes across that way. Brad Renfro was an excellent find for this part. I haven't seen him in anything else, though. I imagine his Southern accent will hurt in getting other roles. Current TV stars Bradley Whitford and Anthony Edwards were non-entities in this film. It's a good film, not great. Grade B-

The premise of The Client is great. The first act sets the scene for a really tense and interesting flick. Things go downhill steadily all the way through to the final act. The film has a great cast. Susan Sarandon is excellent as is Tommy Lee Jones. It's the plot and pacing that lets it down.

We go from a believable difficult situation into more farce as with each passing minute. The thing is it happens pretty slowly so it's at about the 2/3rd point that the wheels start to come off.

Pity as the cast are brilliant.

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.