OVP: The Client (1994)

Film: The Client (1994)
Stars: Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Renfro, Mary-Louise Parker, Anthony LaPaglia
Director: Joel Schumacher
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Susan Sarandon)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

During the 1990's, one of the biggest writers on the planet was John Grisham (still an author that can command bestseller lists, though with a thin hold on larger pop culture), and pretty much every major Grisham novel was bound (for a time) to be brought to the big-screen.  This was because he was basically a star attraction in the title, and it worked-movies like The Firm and The Pelican Brief were big hits, and it wasn't until the late 1990's with box office disappointments like The Chamber and The Rainmaker that the phenomenon of the Grisham adaptation started to die down.  The Client, though, was released during the heyday of Grisham's movies, and is one of only two of his film adaptations (despite all of them having buzzy casts) to win an Academy Award nomination for acting (the other being The Firm for Holly Hunter), getting Susan Sarandon the third of the four nominations she received from 1991-95.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on young Mark Sway (Renfro), an 11-year-old frequently in trouble who accidentally witnesses a suicide.  Before he dies, though, the man who kills himself tells Mark the location of a US Senator's body who has gone missing, and is presumed dead.  It turns out he is dead, and was killed by a rebellious mob hitman named Barry "The Blade" Muldano (LaPaglia).  Both US Attorney Roy Foltrigg (Jones) and henchmen of the Blade's gang begin to harass Mark, his brother (who has been traumatized by the suicide & stopped speaking) and his mother (Parker), so Mark hires a recovering alcoholic attorney named Reggie Love (Sarandon), who despite not being of the same educational caliber as Foltrigg, is able to go toe-to-toe with him, frequently outsmarting his tricks.  Despite friction between the two, Mark & Reggie form an unlikely friendship, and in the end Reggie is able to find the senator's body with Mark, and put Mark's family into witness protection, while still providing Foltrigg with enough evidence to win his case & mount a run for the governorship (the Blade is killed by the mob for his reckless behavior).  Thus, happy endings all around for the heroes, and comeuppance for the villain.

The movie feels a bit like an extended episode of Law & Order upon revisit, albeit with a helluva guest star budget.  I have not read The Client, but I have enjoyed Grisham's books in the past (my favorite is probably The Runaway Jury), as they're pulpy and the sort of thing you can take on a family vacation without having to really consider the book, and frequently putting it down at different intervals (it's not like reading Portnoy's Complaint).  But the movie itself meanders too much, and  doesn't ground Mark with enough consistency, even for an 11-year-old.  Renfro launched his career with this film, which would eventually include hits like Tom and Huck and Sleepers before he would become a tragic case of child stardom gone wrong (drugs, arrests, and death-by-overdose at the age of 25 would follow).  He's good in this movie, but the script does him few favors, making him lose trust in Reggie too often to feel plausible, particularly considering that he has a decent relationship with his mother, even if she's not June Cleaver, and so overreacting to female authority figures feels like a reach.

The movie won one Academy Award nomination, in line with our theme this week, for Best Actress. Sarandon for a brief period in the early 1990's got nominated for everything.  Oscar sometimes does this with actors they feel deserve to eventually win a trophy, increasing their odds of getting one by citing them always, and then immediately lose interest after they win (I suspect if Amy Adams wins a nomination in the next couple of years, she won't be able to get nominated under any circumstances in a similar way afterward).  This was at a point in that push to honor Sarandon, and I honestly wonder if she was close to winning considering how famously bad the category was in 1994 (Jessica Lange ended up winning for a film that had sat on Orion's shelf for three years), but this would've been a weird Oscar win.  Sarandon specializes in playing smart, loquacious women, but this isn't a serious film, and this is merely a good performance in a middling movie.  That being said, I've seen a chunk of these nominations, and I can't promise I won't also consider Sarandon for the win as, yes, 1994 was a strange year for Best Actress.