REVIEW:
The Pelican Brief is one of those movies that completely captures the feel of a nineties movie. In the nineties there were just so many level thrillers involving hitmen and corruption and ominous music and dark shadows. In terms of atmosphere, this movie does it better than most. This is the second movie to be released that year, based on a John Grisham book, following Tom Cruise in the Firm, and that plus the star studded cast of combining Julia Roberts with Denzel Washington, means all of the pieces were in place for this one to be a knockout.
Unfortunately, it’s not. For a number of reasons. Let’s start with the cast. Our two dynamo stars are both giving the most quiet and reserved performances of their careers. There are no loud outbursts or any personality blasts here. Instead, it’s almost as if they are whispering throughout the movie. Which is fine for this type of serious, dark film, but it’s not the way we are used to seeing our stars.
And then there’s the story. So much hitman action. So many attacks. First, there are all the murders, which involve such things as car bombs, strangling, and hotel room sliding closet doors. But then there are all of the chases and attacks with hitman, where the bad guys don’t catch their target, Darbie Shaw, (Roberts.) It’s quite a lot of the same thing over and over again.
The story is about a young law student (Shaw,) who writes a brief about her theory on why two Supreme Court justices were both found murdered. She finds a connection between them and the President, and shows it to her older, law professor boyfriend, and he shows it to his friend at the FBI. The next thing you know, all of these people who have seen the brief and passed it along are being murdered. Darbie now gets a newspaper reporter (Washington,) involved to try to help her track down sources and get this story out. And the rest of the movie is basically them running around, doing those things, while avoiding hitmen. The feel of the movie is great. The story, however, leaves something to be desired.