‘The Pelican Brief’
25 years ago, the John Grisham legal thriller was in the midst of becoming a cottage industry unto itself, between the novels that were dominating bookstores and airport lounges, to the movies that had already begun to captivate audiences, starting with 1992’s The Firm. But with the release of The Pelican Brief, starring A-Listers Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, the genre may well have been perfected. Directed by the great Alan J. Pakula (All the President’s Men; To Kill a Mockingbird), The Pelican Brief is a note-perfect thriller following young law student Darby Shaw (Roberts), who accidentally stumbles upon the correct theory for why a pair of Supreme Court justices were murdered on the same night. Much chasing through parking garages and panicked piano score follows, with Washington playing the newspaper reporter trying to chase Shaw’s story down and keep her alive. In 25 years, Hollywood hasn’t done the thriller any better (though it’s more than worth noting that backing off of the romantic overtones of the relationship between the two leads in the book looks really bad when your leads are a white woman and a black man).