The Pelican Brief (1993)

Film: The Pelican Brief (1993)

Stars: Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Sam Shepard, John Heard, Tony Goldwyn, Stanley Tucci, Hume Cronyn, John Lithgow

Director: Alan J. Pakula

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 (and now 2025) Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Julia Roberts: click here to learn more about Ms. Roberts (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In the wake of her double Oscar nominations, and the unprecedented box office success of Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts embarked on a two-pronged road as a movie star.  From 1991-93, Roberts headlined four films (Sleeping with the Enemy, Hook, Dying Young, and today's picture, The Pelican Brief) that had two things in common.  The first was that they were all hits-Roberts, whose acting price was skyrocketing, was the last of a breed of movie stars who could get audiences to go into theaters for genres as diverse as thrillers, romantic dramas, and family-friendly fantasy pictures based on her name alone.  Pretty much everything she touched turned to gold, to the point where there's a scene in The Player (in which she makes a small cameo) where during a casting meeting everyone just keeps pitching Julia Roberts for all of their movies, the only actress that anyone cares about at the moment).  But in a moment of caution for Roberts that she should've heeded (it might have saved her some hurt), none of these movies were well-received by critics.  Unlike Steel Magnolias and Pretty Woman, she received no Oscar nominations for these pictures, and critics disliked the films.  This would set up a moment (which we'll discuss next week) where the public would prove that all stars can only ascend so high before they are taken down.  But first, let's talk The Pelican Brief.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Pelican Brief, based on the bestselling novel by John Grisham, is about two people associated with two dead Supreme Court justices (both assassinated in plain sight early on in the picture): Darby Shaw (Roberts), a young law student having an affair with her well-regarded professor Thomas Callahan (Shepard), and Gray Grantham (Washington) a reporter who clerked for one of the justices (Cronyn).  Shaw, through her own ingenuity (and luck) comes up with a theory as to why the two justices were killed, nicknamed the "pelican brief" about how an oil magnate killed the two justices so that his friend the president could appoint two justices willing to disregard the endangered species act, thus allowing him drilling rights in waters that are protected due to them being the habitat of an endangered breed of brown pelican.  As it turns out this is right, and after Callahan is killed in a car explosion that was meant to kill both of them, Darby reaches out to Gray (weirdly, Washington & Roberts do not appear onscreen together until over an hour into this picture), she goes on the run, trying to help Gray prove that her theory is right as everyone around her starts to die.

In the 1990's to early 2000's, John Grisham novels were insanely hot properties for Hollywood.  It wasn't just Denzel Washington & Julia Roberts getting in on the action.  Some of the biggest stars of the era (Tom Cruise, Susan Sarandon, Sandra Bullock, Gene Hackman, Matt Damon, John Cusack, & Tim Allen) all appeared in movies adapted from his work, and pretty much every book release was an event in a way that, quite frankly, adult dramatic novels simply don't have anymore in an era where most literary bestsellers are adults reading books meant for teenagers.  So this was a story that many people already knew going into it, which is good as The Pelican Brief is kind of nonsense.  The movie is at once deeply telegraphed and contains very little logic.  It's clear early on in the picture that there are very few twists (every time there's new information, it's 100% accurate, no misdirects), and everyone dies in roughly the order you'd expect.

The one thing that's good about this is Roberts & Washington.  There's a lot that's been said about their pairing onscreen, with Washington famously refusing to kiss Roberts onscreen (Roberts has said in subsequent interviews that she thought a kiss made sense), because he thought it would upset his fanbase (the core of which, according to Washington, was Black women)...something that's been largely the case in the years since (think about how rarely Denzel Washington, People's "Sexiest Man Alive" at one point, has done love scenes compared with contemporaries like Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson).  This makes the film about platonic friends (though it hosted a lot of think pieces at the time about how the studio was trying to avoid an interracial kiss that likely would've taken place if the lead had been Cruise or Gibson), ones who flirt a bit but largely avoid romantic entanglements, which is a nice change-of-pace for a movie that initially has its beautiful young lead sleeping with her professor as if it's acceptable.  Their movie star charisma is rolling off of the screen-him suave & savvy, her steely & glowing, enough so that you might be convinced this is a good movie when it's just them...but anytime it cuts away you learn the truth.