(1993) Largely a forgettable film, riddled with coincidences, from director/screenwriter Alan J. Pakula based on John Grisham's legal-thrills novel of an inside-the-Beltway murder conspiracy. I'd seen it some ten years earlier but had nearly completely forgot I'd watched it; only a few scenes helped me recalling I'd previous seen it.

Two justices of the US Supreme Court are murdered: the elderly, ailing, liberal Rosenberg (Hume Cronyn), shot dead in his bed along with his male nurse in his home, and Jensen, garroted in a theater frequented by homosexuals; the FBI's security having failed to protect them. Before his assassination, Rosenberg had commented: "Never seems to amaze what a man will do to get into the Oval Office."

Tulane law student Darby Shaw (Julia Roberts), 24 years old, and the girlfriend of her much older law professor, Tom Callahan (Sam Shepard), puts together from research - comparing similarities in the opinions of the two dead justices - her theory of who could be behind the killings. With the two deceased justices leaving seats absent on the Court, the President (Robert Culp) must appoint two new replacements favoring his agenda.

Callahan passes along her Pelican Brief (so-called because it concerns a legal case pitting a wealthy oilman's highly lucrative project for oil drilling in Louisiana that would disrupt the environmental habitat of several birds, especially the endangered Louisiana brown pelican, against the Green Fund, which eventually could go before the Supreme Court) to his friend Gavin Verheek (John Heard), special chief counsel to the director of the FBI, Denton Voyles (James B. Sikking).

Meanwhile, Gray Grantham (Denzel Washington), reporter for the Washington Herald, has received calls from someone calling himself "Garcia" with information about the assassinations, but the contact gets cold feet. The president's chief of staff, Fletcher Coal, summarizes for the mostly clueless President that the Pelican Brief "indirectly implicates the White House." Initially the President personally requests that the FBI director "back off," but when the story begins to get out of hand, with his having participated in obstruction of justice, and he asks his chief of staff how he's going to deal with it, Coal says: "Mr President, you don't want to know."

After those trying to help Darby get blown up or wacked, she contacts Gray, and they collaborate, until Darby gets further frightened and wants out. "If you disappear," Gray tells her, "so does justice."

The bad guys seem to be omniscient, having everything and everyone bugged. Gray has to convince his editor, Smith Keen (John Lithgow), to give him more time to secure sources and corroborate his story.

In a tv interview with Grantham at the conclusion, the interviewer, unable to get Gray to divulge any details about Darby or her whereabouts, suggests to the audience that Miss Shaw is mostly likely like Deep Throat, a figment of the reporter's imagination.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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