Thehibikiew Not even bad in a good way

HeadlinesExotic Boring

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

inspectors71 watched his own All the President's Men so many times. I think he may have figured he could go back to the trough again. The Pelican Brief, based on another in an interminable series of dull John Grisham novels, is a perfect snapshot of what to do if you want to make a zillion bucks with a high-star-power, breathless, clichéd blob of pablum.I use pablum because baby food is, to adults, flavorless and filling, much like TPB, which kneels down to all the sacred cows of Grisham/Pakula liberalism.Evil, Nixonian, weak, Bush-41, courageous newspaper reporter, living Constitution, environmentalist mush.But, hey, it's got Denzel Washington, back before we found out he has one character, and Julia Roberts, all girlnextdoorish, frail but tough, and with, I swear, 13 pounds of hair on her noggin. Throw in every good guy and bad guy character actor you can think of, top it off with Robert Culp as a thinly-veiled George H. W., and you've got the makings of a movie that made said zillions.And I, with, hopefully, more than a few other movie-goers, left feeling that I had been both played by Pakula and Grisham, and in need for something tasty for my mind to digest.So, I went home to watch All the President's Men.

Alan Caras I like the movie better now than when first released. I think the weakness of the movie is due to the weakness in setting the scene, and the manner of telling the tale. The director blew it.Roberts and Washington salvage the director's ham handed story telling, and this is an excellent ensemble cast.I would have preferred the story be told more directly, and the plotting, planning and execution of the assassinations be revealed. Instead of a mystery, I think the story is better told as a good old fashioned detective story. The director could have used some of the old Phillip Marlow or Sam Spade series as models.

classicalsteve Interestingly, about 13 years after the release of the original novel "The Pelican Brief" by John Grisham which centers around the investigations and theories involving the assassinations of two Supreme Court Justices, two Supreme Court Justices' careers also ended close to the same time. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her plans to retire in the summer of 2005 which was followed by the unexpected death of William Rehnquist in the Fall of the same year. It's always a bit spooky when real life follows fiction, although as far as is known, the departure of Rehnquist and O'Connor had nothing to do with "foul play" or political currents, or did it?In "The Pelican Brief", two diametrically opposed Supreme Court Justices, Rosenberg and Jensen, are assassinated by unknown assailants for unknown reasons. Rosenberg was an aging liberal whose days on the court were probably numbered. Jensen was a conservative in the prime of his judicial career. While the first assassination is advantageous to the current sitting US President who we learn is a Republican, the second assassination makes no sense in terms of the first. At a law school near New Orleans, an ambitious young law student, Darby Shaw (played with unending believability by Julia Roberts) is dating one of her law professors, Thomas Callahan (Sam Shepherd). After both professor and student learn of the assassinations, Darby decides she can crack the case. (Callahan had interned with Rosenberg when he was a law student.) While law enforcement believes the assassinations were probably enacted as revenge by a disillusioned losing party in a former case, Shaw decides to research deeper to unearth something political which Rosenberg and Jensen might have had in common. She engages in her own investigation of sorts and writes an essay on her findings, a "brief".She passes her brief to Callahan who doesn't take it too seriously. He takes a trip to Washington D.C. to attend the funeral of Rosenberg where he meets a former classmate, Gavin Verheek (John Heard), who now works in the legal department of the FBI. Callahan offers the brief to Verheek who in turn passes into the FBI. The FBI begins believing the brief is a much more serious theory of the assassinations than either Callahan or Verheek had realized, and the brief ends up in the hands of the president.Back in New Orleans, Darby is fearing for her life when tragedy suddenly strikes. She believes the brief has opened up a kind of Pandora's Box and doesn't know who's after her nor whose after some of the people around her. Is it the CIA or another secret organization which has decided to kill her because of the brief? She contacts Washington D.C. political reporter Gray Grantham (Denzel Washington) to help her. The plot then becomes about whether Darby and Gray can confirm the theory of the brief before they are assassinated themselves, like the Supreme Court Justices.A very well-done and spot-on political thriller, all from the mind of John Grisham. Julia Roberts is 100% convincing as Darby Shaw, the-opinionated-law-student-turned-political-target whose brief is shaking the foundations of the political hierarchy at the highest levels. Washington is equally as intense as Gray Grantham, a "Woodstein"-type reporter trying to get to the bottom of political corruption wherever it festers. A few name talents appear in smaller roles, notably Hume Cronyn as Justice Rosenberg and John Lithgow as Smith Keen, editor of Grantham's newspaper the Washington Herald. A compelling film from start to finish with an outstanding cast.

hasanandassociates This movie shows how capitalism deals with environment in the US. The story is similar to what the international oil companies (IOCs) does worldwide. This is particularly true for developing countries where the inefficient government and chaotic situation allows them to go far more than they go in US. The movie also successfully demonstrates the interrelations among corrupt politicians, government officials and the big corporations. However, it depicted an ideal role for the media which is rarely the case. What I believe that, mostly because of the benefits from commercials of IOCs, the media mostly favors the powerful corporations. The most important point is that, while it tells the story, the movie does not bore the viewer. I strongly recommend wide viewing of this movie and then think about the case when the OICs operate in a freer environment. I would also wait for similar movies which speaks about Middle Eastern or Nigerian version of such stories. Happy viewing.