The Pelican Brief (1997, DVD)

Mega-bestselling author John Grisham s novels seem tailor-made for the big screen. To Hollywood where no one reads anyway they are nothing more than three hundred page treatments for the next blockbuster film. The Pelican Brief is no different. It is Grisham s best book to date and a passable film. Not as good as The Firm, but certainly better than The Client.

The story is fairly unusual for the thriller genre in that it features a female protagonist. Darby Shaw (Julia Roberts) is a young law student in New Orleans who is having an affair with one of her professors (Sam Shepard). When the professor s former mentor, now a Supreme Court Justice, is murdered, Darby decides to investigate. She probes into the Court s docket, analyzes the Justice s decisions and finally comes up with a likely suspect.

Like any good lawyer, Darby writes up her findings. Thus, the eponymous Pelican Brief is born. The professor reads the brief, finds it intriguing and passes it on to a friend at the FBI. That s when the plot starts to thicken. The professor is killed by a car bomb and mysterious operatives start pursuing Darby. The hunt is on.

Darby is alone and scared and doesn t know what to do. First she turns to the FBI, but that doesn t work. Who can she trust? Finally, she enlists the aid of an investigative journalist (Denzel Washington), but she s gotten wise by now. If he s going to get involved, it has to be on her terms.

Darby Shaw is an interesting character for a modern, mainstream Hollywood picture, because she is a smart woman who uses her intelligence and wit to get by, not her looks. Although Julia Roberts is one of the most attractive women around, that is completely incidental to her performance. At times, she is downright unglamorous in the film just as her character should be. A lot of actresses don t have to courage to appear anything less than beautiful. Roberts does and I applaud her for it.

There are several flaws in the story, though, that keep this from being a better film. The main problem and it was the same in the book is that you never know what the hell is going on. What is the Pelican Brief? What s in it? What s it all about? You only really find out at the end, and by then it s too late. The suspense is nice and the drama reasonably compelling, but you never really know what it is in service of.

Another problem is with the villains. A good thriller relies on its villains, even more than it does its heroes. It is hard to tell who the bad guys are in The Pelican Brief it seems that everyone is and the likely candidates are never developed or even shown enough for us to get to know them. A good villain is someone you fear and loathe. You never get that here.

The Pelican Brief was written and directed by Alan J. Pakula the same man who helmed All the President s Men, a much better story of Washington politics and corruption. That film was written by William Goldman, though, and Pakula is not nearly so gifted a writer as Goldman. The differences may be subtle, but they are telling. Pakula s characters aside for Darby are not interesting enough, his suspense is not taut enough and his scenes just do not pay off enough. As if that weren t enough, the film just goes on too long a good ten minutes past the climax and that is death for a thriller.