The Pelican Brief (DVD)

The Pelican Brief is an adaptation of another John Grisham classic, called the Pelican Brief (obviously!), featuring some of the bigger Hollywood stars including Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington taking the reigns of the main roles.

Two judges are assassinated in the same night. Rosenberg, an old, crippled and dying Supreme Justice, hated for his controversial views on controversial issues, is shot to death whilst he sleeps in his ...
...to a homosexual club. The US is up in arms and the hunt is on to determine who killed them and why. Two judges with nothing in common. Almost nothing, anyway.
Intelligent law student Darby Shaw (Roberts) elaborates an idea which ironically she doesn’t give much credit in a researched brief, dubbed the Pelican Brief due to the nature of the idea. She shares her brief with her lover, her law professor Thomas Callahan, and it inadvertently ... more

The Pelican Brief is an adaptation of another John Grisham classic, called the Pelican Brief (obviously!), featuring some of the bigger Hollywood stars including Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington taking the reigns of the main roles.

Two judges are assassinated in the same night. Rosenberg, an old, crippled and dying Supreme Justice, hated for his controversial views on controversial issues, is shot to death whilst he sleeps in his bed. Jensen, another Supreme Justice, is strangled during his visit to a homosexual club. The US is up in arms and the hunt is on to determine who killed them and why. Two judges with nothing in common. Almost nothing, anyway.
Intelligent law student Darby Shaw (Roberts) elaborates an idea which ironically she doesn’t give much credit in a researched brief, dubbed the Pelican Brief due to the nature of the idea. She shares her brief with her lover, her law professor Thomas Callahan, and it inadvertently climbs the channels of authority through Thomas’s best friend and FBI agent, Gavin Verheek.
After a romantic night out, Thomas is killed when a car bomb blows up his vehicle which Darby is quick to realise was meant for her as well. She has become a target, with hitmen fast on her trail, so she has no other option but to go on the run. She knows her only chance of surviving is to publish the brief before the hitmen track her down, but to who can she turn when everyone who knew about the Brief is dead? A Washington Herald reporter, Gray Grantham (Washington), is about to get a lead that will change his life. Will she do it or will the trained killers silence Darby, who has a lot to learn about being on the run?

The film accurately reflects the style of Grisham’s fictitious legal novels, in particular the heavy legal format that encapsulates the plot. The serious legal style and legal jargon can be hard to follow in the book itself, and in the steady stream of a film not understanding something can mean you can quickly lose the plot, something I found myself doing a lot during the film. There isn’t much that can be done to animate or enlighten the heavy legal talk in a film. However, the suspense throughout this film will have you on the edge of your seat or curled tightly in a ball as the team of smooth, calm professional killers go on the hunt for Ms. Shaw, with a soundtrack accompanying the film which can only increase the tension of the most crucial scenes.

I saw the film after reading the book, and I thought Denzel Washington was an excellent choice to play Grantham, portraying him exactly as I had perceived him to be in the book. Roberts plays the role of Shaw well, but I thought she made her character a little too emotional in the film, more emotional and expressive as I had perceived her to be in the book, in particular speaking in private with a soft voice that broke with emotion frequently, often to the point where you can hardly hear what she’s saying especially when she is describing the idea behind the Brief to Grantham. I think the film producers wanted Shaw to appear more emotional in light of her circumstances than the Shaw Grisham created in his book. The character in the film holds well under the immense pressure of her situation, holding a fine balance between common sense and emotion, survival and grief, but she is made more realistic by showing some emotion. After all, who wouldn’t react when your farfetched theory is validated when the people you love and who know about the Brief are assassinated around you? Apart from the fact that Roberts comes across as more emotional, another difference between the film and the book is the different ending, something I was actually relieved to see, feeling the film ended in a more tasteful way. Not following me here? Then go read the book and then watch the film! You will not regret it!

The plot of both the film and the book are cleverly thought out and well paced. However, the film is not one of the most memorable films you will ever see, unless perhaps you are a huge Grisham fan like myself, who owns all of his books and you are interested in the way the scriptwriters have interpreted and portrayed the book. If this is the case, I’d like to point out that you can buy this film on VHS for £3.99 or so from the never-ending HMV sale. If you have read Grisham’s legal novels in the past and disliked the heavily legal and intellectually involved style he adopts, you will like the film even less. Understanding the plot stems from the all-talk parts of the film, so children may not understand this film, making The Pelican Brief more appropriate for teenagers and above.

My love for Grisham and his books will cause me to have some personal bias in my recommendation, which I shamelessly admit, but I recommend the film all the same.
 

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