The Client

John Grisham is one of my favorite authors. He is truly the king of legal thrillers. Being a lawyer himself he knows his works inside out. I have read many of his novels and needless to say that I have watched all their movie adaptations. All of them have been  quite good and up to the mark. But I prefer The Client (book) to others. Many others who are aware of his works may not be of the same opinion, majority might say A Time To Kill or The Rainmaker to be the best. Some might say The Firm was better or even The Pelican Brief or other of his works. In this post I would like to talk about the movie The Client.

The Client was directed by Joel Schumacher. The screenplay for it was written was Akiva Goldsman and Robert Getchell.

The movie starts with Mark(Brad Renfro) and his brother finding a lawyer who is about to commit to suicide. As Mark tries to save him, the lawyer grabs Mark too and tries to kill Mark along with himself. Thinking of these as his last moments, the lawyer tells Mark the reasons because of which he is committing suicide. The words Mark hears are something which troubles Mark and he knows anyone who would know this things will not be able to live.

Mark somehow manages to save himself and runs along with his brother who was hiding and watching all the events. His brother, Rick gets traumatized due this and has a shock. Thus Rick is hospitalized. Unable to keep his guilt Mark calls the cops and tells them about the body of the lawyer in the woods without disclosing his identity. And when Mark goes there at the location and watches the cops taking the body, he gets caught and the police interrogate him about the body and his connection.

Now Mark is in trouble since he cannot get associated with that dead lawyer's case because the lawyer's client can go to the extent of killing anyone to keep his secret. Neither can Mark tell the cops the last words that the lawyer had said to him before dying.

During all this the FBI and one famous district attorney, Roy Foltrigg (Tommy Lee Jones) come in middle, adding to Mark's troubles. They try to make him reveal what he knows in order to charge that lawyer's client. To save himself and his family, Mark finds himself a lawyer Reggie Love (Susan Sarandon). Reggie's dedication and affection to her little client and the district attorney's fight and struggle against the dead lawyer's client is simply brilliant.

So what is the secret? Who is that Client? What has he done, that pushes his own lawyer to the extent to committing suicide? Watch it out and have an awesome legal adventure.

I have tried my best to avoid the spoilers in this post so its only half of the entire plot, the movie as a whole awaits to thrill you and take you in the world of these brilliant and extraordinary characters.