The Client (1994)

The Client (1994)

7/10

Starring

Susan Sarandon

Tommy Lee Jones

Directed by Joel Schumacher

After watching Thelma and Louise I knew my day was not over until I saw The Client again. Here is a movie that placed Susan Sarandon right there in my memory as a great actress. This is one her best movies besides Dead Man Walking (1995), Thelma and Louise (1991) and Stepmom (1998) (not in that order). The movie has her play a role that I could say definitively suit her, she had to get a child to trust her and then use that trust to save the child and his family’s life.

Based on a John Grisham’s novel of the same name, the movie also had veteran actor Tommy Lee Jones and it earned Susan Sarandon another nomination for Best Actress in the Academy Awards (in her career she has been nominated five times and won one for Dead Man Walking). She did however for her performance in this movie as a mother figure and a caring lawyer win the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a leading role.

The movie plays out as so, a young family (of a mother and two sons) lives in a trailer and while the mother went to work, the boys went to play in the woods.

While there by a stream a car drove up, the driver did not see the young boys, but they saw him. They watched him get out of the car stick a hose in the exhaust get back into the car with the hose in the car window hoping the fumes will kill him.

This made the eldest Mark, go and pull out the hose trying to stop the man from killing himself, an action that had the man catch him, drag him into the car after punching him.

The man starts spilling his guts about why he wants to kill himself, which was based on his knowledge of a dead body’s whereabout.

Mark finally gets the upper hand and gets free from the driver, who later commits suicide. Now the FBI is all over Mark based on evidence that he was in the car. They want to know where the body was buried, that information Mark claims not to know.

Afraid for his life he sorts out a lawyer, Reggie Love (Susan Sarandon). She takes his case for a dollar and during the whole process her motherly instincts kicks in and she had to struggle on how to be there for the young man and be his lawyer.

A great law movie from the 90s, one many will forever cherish and I believe you too will enjoy this flick if you get to see it again or for the first time.