Review of The Pelican Brief (1993) by Bob K — 10 Dec 2018
How can the director of Klute, The Parallax View, All The President's Men, and Presumed Innocent go wrong? By starting with a lousy script, and working with actors who cannot overcome their star power to provide any subtlety or nuance.
Those other films are among my favorites, and have plenty of A-List talent, but they're not forced to appear heroic or speak dumbed down dialogue. This story is complex, but there's no depiction of how Julia Roberts actually goes about creating her famous Brief, putting the pieces together.
That should have been the heart of this movie. Instead we get caricatured hit guys, newspaper editors and a hunky law professor, with no build up of tension or the requisite intelligence. There are plenty of people who couldn't follow the events in President's Men, but that doesn't mean it should have been simplified, and Pakula was faithful in that pic, one of my favorites.
This one is just lazy.
This review of The Pelican Brief (1993) was written by Bob K on 10 Dec 2018.
The Pelican Brief has generally received positive reviews.
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