Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 5-December-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Client (1994)

The Client is one of the more exciting entries on the list of movies I like because they tell how strangers can change each other's lives without the burden of happy-ever-after. These movies require chemistry between the actors just as romances do, but since the single purpose of the story isn't creating a couple, they allow for a greater number of distinctive characters and better illustrate the potential of chance encounters.

Freedom of character notwithstanding, The Client employs several classic types. One is the role for which Susan Sarandon is famous, i.e., the smart woman who is equally tough and tender. She appears about a half hour into the film after her preteen co-star, Brad Renfro, has started the show. Renfro plays a boy named Mark Sway who, one idle Memphis afternoon, tries unsuccessfully to prevent a man from committing suicide. Mark and the man have never met before, but during their short, terrifying time together the man reveals where his New Orleans crime bosses have buried a murdered senator. Within hours the FBI and a hotshot lawyer (Tommy Lee Jones in full Southern SOB mode) begin investigating the suicide and the likelihood that the young witness knows more than he's telling. Naturally, the criminals who offed the senator are also eager to discover what Mark knows and silence him if he could prove dangerous.

With the picture riding on his shoulders, Renfro displays an Artful Dodger charm and extraordinary ease around the older, more experienced actors. (Such promise makes his death by drug overdose at age 25 especially lamentable.) Mark's rough edges can't blot out the sweetness of a boy who loves his mother and brother, the former made wretched by poverty, the latter made comatose by witnessing Mark's encounter with the dead man. No wonder he instantly wins the loyalty of fledgling lawyer Reggie Love (Sarandon) when he barges into her office. A graduate of the school of hard knocks, Reggie can't help but view her client as a surrogate son crying out for a mother's wing. Nor can she bear the thought of failing him in his need. Although he floods her with emotion, she keeps her cool while shielding him from those who want to use him and those who want to harm him. (To this end Sarandon and Jones exchange several barrages of gamesmanship.)

It's possible that Mark's intrepidness and ingenuity could only exist in an 11-year-old sprung from the mind of a Hollywood screenwriter (or novelist John Grisham, from whose book the movie comes). No matter. If the boy's pluck is fancy at least it propels an absorbing plot right up to the moment when his dilemma can be resolved and his champion's instincts fulfilled. Mark and Reggie's relationship must end when their business comes to a close. Yet it's gratifying to know that their tough times, past and future, have been softened by what they have shared.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.