Save your money for something good and enjoyable

A Masterpiece!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

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!

Intrigued by the coincidental assassination of two supreme court justices, a law student comes up with a conspiracy theory that lands her in trouble when it turns out that her hypothesis is correct in this legal thriller written and directed by Alan J. Pakula from a novel by John Grisham. The skilled craftsman behind 'The Parallax View' and 'All the President's Men', Pakula knows how to helm a good paranoia thriller and there are several superb sequences here that showcase his craft. The best of these has an incognito hired assassin walking hand-in-hand with the film's oblivious heroine; Pakula drums up much tension by dragging out the assassin slowing reaching for a gun he has hidden on his person. 'The Pelican Brief' is not, however, a paranoia thriller in the strictest sense of the term. There is no real mystery element at all (despite the 'Mystery' genre listing on IMDb). It is always clear who the bad guys are and it is also always obvious that the protagonist's life really is in danger. In short, the film lacks the ambiguity and uncertainty that renders something like fellow 1993 Grisham adaptation 'The Firm' so dynamic. The film misses the mark with an overly sentimental ending too, but the acting is at least solid from all concerned. Leads Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington have great chemistry together without ever the suggestion of romantic sparks, and John Lithgow, Told Goldwyn and Stanley Tucci are all in fine form. The film is invariably exciting at times too. It is just not all that one might expect from a project with Pakula and Grisham's names both attached.

well here a a conspiracy thriller from the director presumed innocent and all the presidents men so you can see where the director is going with his story around white house stuff so with a great a list cast Julia Roberts ... Darby Shaw Denzel Washington ... Gray Grantham Sam Shepard ... Thomas Callahan John Heard ... Gavin Vereek 5Tony Goldwyn ... Fletcher Coal James Sikking ... FBI Director Denton Voyles William Atherton ... Bob Gminski Robert Culp ... President Stanley Tucci ... Khamel Hume Cronyn ... Justice Rosenberg John Lithgow ... Smith Keen so with all these characters a young Julia Roberts character derby shaw is a student who likes to study conspiracies come across a problem that might bring down the president as she is having an affair with the her professor who is an aid to one of the 2 judges killed so the brief he has on this conspiracy murder smells a idea that someone high has done this so when the F B I director gets wind of this through a mutual friend he he gives it to a body guard who is close to the presidents menpresident could be smeared. So, he advises the president to tell the director to drop it, which he does.and later on derby professor is out on a date and there messing around they go back to the car he refuse to let her drive she gets out and he blows up the FBI Are on her case but she gets away so as the action hot upher place is has been burglarized and what was taken were her computer and her disks. Obviously, her brief has someone really annoyed the president friend at the FBI, he agrees to come meet her but before he does someone shoots him and takes his place but derby is keeping ahead a goes to a journalist gray grantam who doesn't believe at first but when she brings him eviedence he goes public but his editor is suspicious about what going great thriller of cat and mouse this is my 76 review gave this 7 out of 10 its 2hrs 15mins a great looking movie can both of them live to tell the world as they are moving targets

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.