ezrawhite This film suffers from over length. Also the ending feels like it was added on. It seems like a post production re-shoot. In this film Julia Roberts plays a legal student. The murder of two supreme court justices have prompt her into seeing if she can figure out the reasons and motives for their murders. She then writes about her finding called "The Pelican Brief". After she presents this to 2 people they are murdered. She then decides to take off and contacts a reporter hoping she can find a way to save her own life. Now many scenes in this film should of been edited down or the film should of had a re-write before production began. There is several scenes in the first 1/2 that could have been edited down or been presented with a little more suspense. Julia Roberts and Denzel are fine but the movie is too long!

seymourblack-1 Screen adaptations of a number of John Grisham's best-selling legal thrillers became big box office hits and "The Pelican Brief" certainly falls into this category. With an intriguing plot, numerous action sequences and a star-studded cast, it's no surprise that it did good business. The political conspiracy at the heart of the story makes this an ideal undertaking for director Alan J Pakula whose previous record of success with this type of material is highly impressive and the insidious way in which he builds up the threatening atmosphere of the piece is one of the movie's strongest qualities.Following the assassinations of a couple of Supreme Court Justices, brilliant law student Darby Shaw (Julia Roberts) does some research into any possible similarities between the two men whose political allegiances were known to be very different. Based on her findings, she then writes a brief that outlines her theory about who was responsible for the murders and passes it to her Tulane University law professor Thomas Callahan (Sam Shepherd), who's also her lover. Callahan passes the brief on to his good friend and FBI lawyer Gavin Verheek (John Heard) who, in turn, passes it up through his chain of command.Darby's brief implicates a very wealthy oil tycoon, the FBI and even the White House, so when Callahan is murdered, she suddenly realises that she's in great danger and goes on the run. In her predicament, it's difficult to know who she can trust, so when she contacts respected "Washington Herald" investigative journalist Clay Grantham (Denzel Washington) who, coincidentally had also been tipped off about the story by an anonymous caller who got cold feet before disclosing everything he knew. Darby and Grantham then team up to chase the evidence that they need to authenticate her theory, so that Grantham can eventually break the story in his newspaper.The cast of top class actors in this movie gives the action a great deal of credibility with Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington doing particularly well in showing how a bond of trust develops between their characters as they cope with a series of life-threatening situations as well as some other forms of adversity.Overall, "The Pelican Brief" is an enjoyable movie with the requisite number of chases, shoot-outs and explosions etc and plenty of suspense. Its weakest quality though is its very deliberate pace which prevents it from achieving its potential in terms of excitement.

jdonalds-5 This is a solid movie. Most of the story holds together quite well, being plausible which is very important to me. There are just a few places in the story that I wish the director, Alan J. Pakula, had chosen to make a bit more believable. I won't expose those scenes because I wish to write a spoiler free review this time.I look for movies that I can believe in, written well, acted well, and most important directed well. This passes all of those tests. You can't fail with the likes of Robert Culp, although he plays a bit of a wuss here, or Julia Roberts who was well cast.Backing up the strong crew is a key character played by Denzel Washington, Tony Goldwyn, and several more big name actors. I can't imagine how they were able to attract so many stars.Alan J. Pakula has a long list of good movie credits as director. He did a great job on this story, it had some twists and turns so would have been easy to screw up.

jimbo-53-186511 The Pelican Brief begins with 2 judges being killed in suspicious circumstances. Aspiring law student Darby Shaw (Julia Roberts) has her own theory of why these particular judges were killed and she believes that the killings are politically motivated. Darby decides to write down her theory of what she believes has happened in a document that she calls 'The Pelican Brief' . This is initially done as a sort of 'assignment'. However, when news of the existence of the Pelican Brief gets out, those that are responsible for the killings do everything in their power to get their hands on this document putting Darby and everyone else around her in danger.I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this film as I hadn't read the John Grisham novel upon which this film is based on prior to seeing it. One thing I did, at least expect, was an exciting and fast paced legal and political thriller. The problem with this film is that it moved at a snail's pace and for me was just far too 'talky'. There were good moments in the film and at times it was quite exciting, but it was uneven and felt far longer and far more drawn out than was necessary.As well as being somewhat dull at times, the screenplay didn't make sense at times - I'm still not sure how Julia Roberts knew that the guy in the lift was going to try and kill her (it's possible I might have missed something there as I'll admit that my mind was wandering from time to time due to how bored I was getting with the film). There is also a scene where Darby makes a phone call to Gavin Vereek (John Heard) and asks him to meet her - she's never met him before so she asks him to wear a long sleeve shirt and red cap and asks him how tall he was (this was to make sure that she ends up speaking to the right person). Vereek ends up getting killed and the killer had bugged his phone and recorded the conversation. As a result, he assumes the identity of Vereek in order to kill Darby. I was OK with all of this, but what made me laugh was when he started to put all the clothes on in Vereek's hotel room. OK fair enough, a long sleeve shirt is a fairly generic item of clothing, but a red cap? What the odds of someone having one of those? It just felt a little contrived and a little bit too convenient.The performances from the actors do save the film somewhat; Julia Roberts was particularly good in her respective role. Denzel Washington stars as newspaper reporter Gray Grantham and he helps Darby with her investigations and it is he that ultimately publishes the article which exposes the 'truth' behind the conspiracy. Washington is good in his respective role and his charisma alone is enough in this film.What really let the Pelican Brief down was its dull screenplay; it wasn't particularly exciting or suspenseful and there weren't really any great plot twists. Even the ending felt a little bit anti-climatic. I was expecting a tension fuelled final court scene like we've seen in previous legal thrillers such as A Few Good Men or more recently in The Lincoln Lawyer. The final 30 minutes were pretty good and it's a shame that the rest of the film wasn't as enjoyable. Perhaps part of the problem is that I went in with high expectations - I usually enjoy legal thrillers as they are generally exciting and interesting, but I didn't get that feeling when watching this film. I found large parts of the film to be dull and I also felt that it was far too long. It's not an awful film, but there are far better legal thrillers out there.