The Client **** (1994, Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Renfro, J T Walsh, Will Patton, William H Macy) – Classic Movie Review 653

Director Joel Schumacher’s tense and exciting 1994 thriller is still the best of the film adaptations of John Grisham’s legal mystery novels so far. Susan Sarandon was Oscar nominated and won the BAFTA Film Award for Best Actress.

It is boosted by a rousing turn from Oscar-nominated Susan Sarandon as Reggie Love, the feisty lawyer an 11-year-old Memphis lad called Mark Sway (Brad Renfro) turns to when finds his life in danger after he witnesses a Mafia suicide and overhears a mob attorney’s deadly secret in revealing the location of a US senator’s corpse. The unlikely star pairing of Sarandon and Renfro is a winner in this rousingly made adaptation of the Grisham bestseller, with just the right fragrant legal and criminal atmosphere.

It motors dynamically with a sharp screenplay by Akiva Goldsman and Robert Getchell, atmospheric cinematography by Tony Pierce-Roberts, a notable Howard Shore score and especially Schumacher’s slick, fast-paced direction.

Tommy Lee Jones is excellent, too, as Roy Foltrigg, the politically ambitious district attorney whom Sarandon and Renfro must battle, and J T Walsh, Will Patton, William H Macy and William Sanderson are outstanding. And just look at the quality of the rest of the character support cast: Mary-Louise Parker, Anthony LaPaglia, Anthony Edwards, Ossie Davis, Anthony Heald, David Speck and Kimberly Scott.

Making his film debut, Brad Renfro, a native of Knoxville, Tennessee beat out thousands of actors for the role, including Macaulay Culkin. His only acting experience was a Fountain City Elementary School in Knoxville production sponsored by DARE (Drug and Alcohol Resistance Education), a program in which young people learn about the danger of drugs. Grisham insisted on the casting of an unknown in the part for credibility. Renfro was arrested and convicted several times for drugs possession before his death of a heroin overdose on 15 January 2008, aged 25. He appeared in The Cure (1995), Tom and Huck (1995), Sleepers (1996) and Apt Pupil (1998).

Sarandon and Jones filmed together again in In the Valley of Elah (2007). Schumacher went on to direct Jones in Batman Forever (1995).

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Review 653 derekwinnert.com