July 20, 1994
And now we come to a 1994 artifact that doesn’t seem that dated culturally, except it’s in a genre – the legal thriller – that doesn’t really exist on this level anymore. Not as a slick, shot on location, big time theatrical summer release.
THE CLIENT is the third movie adapted from a novel by John Grisham, after THE FIRM and THE PELICAN BRIEF (both released in 1993). The book was his fourth, also released in 1993. The movie had a $45 million budget (more than THE SHADOW, SPEED or CITY SLICKERS II, almost as much as THE FLINTSTONES!) and was a big hit, making $117 million worldwide. Movies like this were a big deal then!
This one is directed by Joel Schumacher, his followup to FALLING DOWN (<—click on that, it’s one of my better reviews I think), and adapted for the screen by first-timer Akiva Goldsman and Robert Getchell (ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE). It’s kind of a weird story, honestly. Eleven year old Memphis trailer park tough kid Mark Sway (Brad Renfro) and his little brother Ricky (David Speck) sneak off to the woods to smoke stolen cigarettes, and they see a guy (Walter Olkewicz, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME) pull up in a car and attempt suicide by carbon monoxide. When Mark tries to be a good samaritan the guy pulls him into the car and tries to pivot to a murder-suicide.
Turns out he’s a mob lawyer from New Orleans who’s being forced to testify and would rather commit suicide. He babbles about somebody named Barry “The Blade” Muldano and a body buried near a boathouse. Mark and his brother manage to escape, but witness the guy blowing his own head off.
Will Patton (AFTER HOURS) plays a police officer who finds Mark hiding nearby, brings him home, helps his mom (Mary-Louise Parker, BULLETS OVER BROADWAY) bring little brother Ricky, now catatonic, to the hospital, even though she has no insurance. The kid stays catatonic and “very sick” with P.T.S.D. for the rest of the movie.
I was tempted to take Patton as his character from the David Gordon Green HALLOWEEN trilogy, but then he started acting sinister. He’s so sneaky about trying to prove Mark heard something from the lawyer that you assume he’s with the mob, trying to eliminate witnesses.
It’s actually the opposite. He’s finding evidence for U.S. Attorney “Reverend Roy” Foltrigg (Tommy Lee Jones, last seen in BLOWN AWAY) to prosecute the fuckers. Reverend Roy is called Reverend Roy because he sounds like a preacher and quotes the Bible. He’s one of those hot shot, rock star, household name U.S. Attorneys, just like all of the U.S. Attorneys you and I know about and could name and have posters of in our locker. He’s very vain and only cares about getting on TV all the time, characteristics we know because of a couple of good scenes where he’s preoccupied with that sort of thing, and also because of a terrible one where talking heads on TV straight up say that about him. (Schumacher and Goldsman have never been known for trusting their audience.)
The kid worries he’ll get killed if he talks, so he keeps lying about it and then walks around downtown Memphis looking for a lawyer to defend him, and comes across Reggie Love (Susan Sarandon, THE HUNGER, THELMA & LOUISE, LIGHT SLEEPER). There’s a fun scene where Mark goes to meet with Roy and his gang, asks if he should talk to a lawyer, and they say no, lawyers are a pain in the ass. He asks to go to the bathroom and Reggie comes in and reveals that she’s representing him and recorded them saying that.
So Reggie is impressive and enjoys sticking it to the man, but also the kid lies to her, they get in some fights, his mom gets mad at her thinking she’s trying to be his mom (and we learn that she has some failed mother issues). But she tries to stand up for his rights, his trailer is burned down, he gets locked in a women’s jail but escapes, they go off and figure out where the body is themselves and there’s some running and being shot at by mobsters and that sort of business.
Also there’s a part where Reggie comments on Mark’s Led Zeppelin t-shirt and he says “What were the names of their first four albums, Miss Groupie?” I only heard of that stereotype about sexist guys quizzing women about a band they like in recent years, but I guess it’s been around for at least 30. (She waits until she’s about to leave to ace his quiz, of course.)
Grisham is from Memphis, and I enjoyed seeing his city in the movie. Of course, Schumacher seems like as much of a tourist there as me – he gets a shot of the Elvis Presley Memorial Wing in the hospital, has a mobster with an Elvis Pez dispenser, and an Elvis impersonator in the E.R. He’s big on making everybody sweaty all the time, and some of the dialogue and accents seem like patronizing stereotypes of low income southerners to me.
The goofiest, most Schumachery touch is the introduction of Barry “The Blade” Muldano (Anthony LaPaglia, ONE GOOD COP), who looks like exactly the jackass you picture when you hear that ridiculous name. We first meet him as a knife, a gold tooth and a dangly knife-themed earring enjoying a maraschino cherry in a club called “DESIRE.” He has a gold watch, rings and chain and a snakeskin suit with no shirt. It’s really a shame this guy didn’t get to hang out with Saul Rubinek’s character from GETTING EVEN DAD. They seem to be going for the same vibe.
The mobsters in this like to wear loud shirts, what we would now call Dan Flashes shirts. I went into Memphis tourist mode and remembered this store called Lansky Bros. in the Peabody Hotel. It opened on Beale Street in the ’40s, catering to the music scene and eventually becoming associated with Elvis because he supposedly looked in the window all the time as a teenager and then when he became a superstar they provided much of his clothes. I saw some flashy shirt there I kinda liked and then looked at the price tag and it was hundreds of dollars, so I will have to wait until I too become a superstar to shop there. Anyway I was half way convinced these guys were supposed to be regulars there and it was a really good detail, but then I remembered they’re supposed to be from New Orleans. False alarm.
This is one of those crazy casts you sometimes see due to a combination of some-of-these-people-became-more-famous and they-used-to-make-movies-with-casts-like-this. You got J.T. Walsh (RED ROCK WEST) as an FBI guy kissing Reverend Roy’s ass to try to get a better assignment, Ossie Davis (JUNGLE FEVER) as a righteous judge in one scene, Anthony Edwards (DELTA HEAT) as Reggie’s right hand man, Bradley Whitford (A PERFECT WORLD) as one of Roy’s shitty assistant dudes, Kim Coates (THE LAST BOY SCOUT) as a weirdo mob enforcer, William H. Macy (THE LAST DRAGON) as a nice doctor, William Sanderson (THE ROCKETEER) as an FBI agent, and Dan Castellaneta (narrator, SUPER MARIO BROS.) as a paparazzi named Slick.
I wouldn’t say this is a movie I like, but I didn’t have a bad time watching it. Like many thrillers of the era, it’s kinda dumb, but pretty well crafted. It’s exhilarating to see a shot where The Blade is in a crowded club and then walks out onto a crowded New Orleans street. They didn’t need to do it, but they did it. That’s what they did back then. Movies! The nineties!
What’s really odd about it to me (besides the inciting incident being bizarre) is that a plucky lawyer going against the odds to protect the little guy from the system makes it feel like a message movie, but if it is one then the message is about one of the least sensational civil rights matters. Yeah, the kid shouldn’t be forced to testify if he doesn’t want to, but also there really is a murder, it would be cool to have that information, and ultimately he does give it to them. It’s just kind of an odd, circumstantial principle to crusade for in a novel and movie. Maybe this comes out of Grisham’s background as a lawyer. He’s making his lawyer complaints. There must have been some preachy U.S. attorney who really got on his nerves.
Renfro is the secret weapon to making the movie watchable. He had not previously been an actor, and was living with his grandma in a trailer park outside of Knoxville when casting director Mali Finn found him. Schumacher was looking for an authentically tough non-actor, and Finn supposedly considered 5,000 kids around the country before settling on Renfro. Even though they have him dressed in a silly tough kid costume consisting of an adult-sized flannel with the sleeves ripped off he comes off very real. And there are truly few things more painful to watch than a perky child actor pretending to be tough, so it’s kind of a miracle that Schumacher found such a kid and got such a natural performance out of him. I really have not joined the posthumous “Schumacher was actually good” brigade, but I gotta give him credit for that one.
And Sarandon is really something too – in fact, she was nominated for an Oscar for best actress. It doesn’t feel substantial enough for that, but maybe that’s a good thing. It’s a thoroughly likable character and she’s got some alcoholism and stuff in there without having to get too melodramatic about it. In a Joel Schumacher movie! I was attached to her enough that it was very sweet when she had to say goodbye to the kid at the end and gave him a big hug. Jones is also good, obviously, without having to dominate the movie. Just a pinch hitter who gets in there, shows off a little, tries a bit of an accent, then steps aside. (But maybe he got antsy for attention, because in the next year he’d do his two most over-the-top and in my opinion worst performances.)
THE CLIENT made money, it got good reviews, and it’s one of the only movies where one of the bad guys gets startled by a raccoon and shoots it with a silenced pistol. Otherwise it’s less memorable than many of Schumacher’s films, but more tasteful. For whatever that’s worth. I’m CLIENT-neutral, I guess.
* * *
Legacy:
The following year there was one season of a CBS TV show version, with JoBeth Williams as Reggie and John Heard as Roy. It was definitely based on the movie, not just the book, because Ossie Davis reprised his one scene character Judge Harry Roosevelt on 13 of the 22 episodes.
Renfro was a big discovery, of course. He won a bunch of “Young Star” awards, starred in THE CURE and TOM AND HUCK the following year, over his career appeared in APT PUPIL, BULLY, GHOST WORLD, an N.E.R.D. video, and more. Tragically, he spent much of his life in and out of rehab and jail, and died of acute heroin/morphine intoxication at only 25.
Schumacher, Goldsman and Jones all reunited to make BATMAN FOREVER, for which they were presumably paid well, though they also had to go on with their lives knowing deep down that they made BATMAN FOREVER.
Schumacher later did another Grisham movie, A TIME TO KILL, which I remember as being much more ridiculous and offensive than this, but it made Matthew McConaughey into a movie star, so that’s not a bad thing.
July 23rd, 2024 at 10:20 pm
A friend of mine grew up near Renfro around the same time. He didn’t know him personally, but he said after Renfro became an actor the general vibe among kids was everyone calling him a sellout and a fake etc. That bummed me out, I can imagine how being a trailer park kid who made it big could make it feel like you never really belong in Hollywood, and then you go home and people there don’t accept you anymore (and apparently, he wasn’t the most popular kid before his career). I was born in ’85 and as a kid I did NOT like most child actors I saw in the ’90s, but Renfro was one of the few I liked/respected (and Elijah Wood has always been My Guy). Ghost World is one of my favorite movies that I watch every year or so, and every time I think about Renfro’s lost life and potential.