weightless
Hollywood really rolled out the red carpet for John Grisham in 1993; not only did these movies look great but they also came with Hollywood’s most bankable stars of the time. Tom Cruise in “The Firm”, Julia Roberts in “The Pelican Brief”, you couldn’t get better than that. Which is a good thing because “Brief” is one of those movies that really runs on starpower. Sure, there is talk about the conservation of the pelican and the greed of oil companies but those things are really just macguffins; the juice here is seeing Roberts, playing a law student name Darby Shaw, and sexy up and coming talent (of the time) Denzel Washington run around on screen together.
The plot is somewhat farfetched. Shaw has stumbled upon the real reason why two supreme court judges have been murdered. She hands her legal report to her college professor/lover (Sam Shepard) and lo and behold, it makes a lot of people around Washington D.C. feel suddenly very nervous. With no place else to turn to, she eventually finds her way to Washington’s Gray Grantham, a reporter for the Washington Herald who believes he has a Deep Throat of his own who knows the real reason why the judges were killed. Together Grantham and Shaw put their heads together and try to find people associated with the brief before they, too, are killed.
Weightless as most of this is, Roberts’ makes a fine harried heroine and Washington is all nobility as this white hat reporter. Most of what keeps this thing watchable is, like I said, starpower and what’s nice about the relationship is that it keeps to the task at hand and doesn’t segue into a romance that would have fit awkwardly into this movie of two people accusing the government of corruption. Stanley Tucci is also wonderfully psychotic as an assassin who leaves the film, sadly, far too quickly.
Other than that it’s to really call this one a success on the level of “The Firm”, which I think really set the bar high for smart/preposterous plotting. This movie is more redundant- following a rhythm of snoop, get chased, hide, repeat. It reveals who the bad guys are early, similar to “The Firm”, but it doesn’t have the heroes wading through that intricate labyrinthe of intrigue or anything that comes close to real paranoia. The heavies sent to set upon the two heroes here also aren’t all that compelling and could use a few lessons from the likes of Wilford Brimley.
Car bombs and killers seem implanted here to liven things up but when the plot is this basic, you need a lot more action than a few brief moments. Mostly, it’s hard to tell what “All the President’s Men” director Alan J. Pacula saw in the material. Who knows? Maybe he imagined Roberts and Washington in these roles and that was enough. Unfortunately, it just “almost” is.