The Pelican Brief (1993)
Directed by Alan J. Pakula
Written by Alan J. Pakula
Starring Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Hume Cronyn
Release Date December 17th, 1993
Published December 27th, 2023
The Pelican Brief stars Julia Roberts as Tulane Law School student, Darby Shaw. Darby is your average 23 year old who happens to be sleeping with her law professor, played by Sam Shepherd. After a pair of Supreme Court Justices, Rosenberg and Jensen, are assassinated, Darby develops a theory as to why these to seemingly opposing judges were killed. It turns out, the two Justices, had one thing in common, the environment. Each voted regularly against major corporations that risked polluting the environment or those that did pollute the environment received significant penalties for doing so.
Taking out Rosenberg and Jensen reshapes the court in someone's favor and that someone is likely the person who arranged two assassinations of Supreme Court Justices within hours of each other. For some reason, only 23 year old law student who is sleeping with her professor, is capable of figuring out this conspiracy. So, Darby writes a legal brief and gives it to her professor boyfriend. The boyfriend passes it to his pal at the FBI, played by John Heard. From there, what comes to be known as The Pelican Brief, reaches the desk of the President's Chief of Staff, played by Tony Goldwyn, who takes it to the President, Robert Culp, and a conspiracy unfolds to kill Darby and bury the brief.
On a second track of story, Washington Post reporter Gray Grantham, played by Denzel Washington, is following his own theory on the assassinations. Gray has connected with a Washington lawyer who claims to have seen a memo implicating his bosses at a big time law firm in the deaths of Rosenberg and Jensen. The lawyer, calling himself Garcia, reaches out to Grantham for help but ultimately backs out of a meeting with the reporter out of fear for his life. In the midst of trying to follow the bread crumbs left by Garcia, Gray meets Darby and the two begin working together to solve this conspiracy while running for their lives from ruthless assassins.
There is something ever so slightly off throughout The Pelican Brief. While the film is perfectly watchable, it feels weightless for a movie about the assassination of TWO Supreme Court justices and a college professor. Oops, spoiler alert. There's actually an even bigger body count than that but I don't want to give everything away regarding this 30 year old blockbuster. The Pelican Brief never feels like anything more than a trashy beach read, perhaps because that is exactly what the movie was based upon. Legendary author John Grisham may have had the pretense of a law professor, but his books were straight melodrama inflated with legal jargon.
That said, I expected a little something more from writer-director Alan J. Pakula. After all, he's the director behind two iconic 70s movies, one of which is the gold standard of political thrillers, All the President's Men, and the other is the remarkable mystery, Klute. Pakula was more than capable of making throwaway blockbuster style movies, even in his heyday, but, paired with the two most radiant stars of the day and a book that had a solid base for an exploration of corruption and politics, I got it in my head that The Pelican Brief should be more than it is. That's on me. The Pelican Brief, away from my expectations and desires, is fine. It's breezy, it moves quickly, and it doesn't overstay its welcome.
Read my full length review at Geeks.Media
