The Client

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.

Susan Sarandon should stick with the tough minded lawyer more often. Perfectly cast in the role of Reggie Love, she brings a certain charm to a role which could have lacked in that department. And to make matters even tougher on her, she was almost outshined by Brad Renfro, who made quite an impression in a film such as this. While the film was put together in a rather conventional way, with Tommy Lee Jones playing an over clichéd character, the film is still rather gripping. A decent film to have in your collection, and one of the better John Grisham book-turned-movie adaptations.

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.

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.

The Client is a good film with moments of extreme greatness especially for a courtroom thriller such as this. But there are also scenes where they should have been added into the editing room. The film was excellent in the beginning, slows to a crawl in the middle, and picks up in the end. If it stayed like the beginning, this film would have been flawless.

After a 11-year-old kid and his brother witnessed a suicide, the kid hires an attorney to help protect him and his family from threatening mafia members and a stubborn Federal District attorney.

The acting is very good in this film. Susan Sarandon seemed like she was born to play this role. She was just perfect! For a kid who never acted before, Brad Renfro was brilliant as the snobby 11-year-old.

Overall, this is a slightly above-average crime thriller. Sarandon steals the show as her role of the attorney. Joel Schumacher directed a masterpiece compared to the Batman films he would take over after this film. I rate this film 8/10.