The Pelican Brief

The Pelican Brief
The movie poster for The Pelican Brief.
Directed by	Alan J. Pakula
Produced by	Alan J. Pakula Pieter Jan Brugge
Written by	Novel: John Grisham Screenplay: Alan J. Pakula
Starring	Julia Roberts Denzel Washington Sam Shepard John Heard Tony Goldwyn James B. Sikking William Atherton Robert Culp Stanley Tucci Special Appearance by Hume Cronyn And John Lithgow
Music by	James Horner
Editing by	Tom Rolf Trudy Ship
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s)	December 17, 1993
Running time	141 min.
Language	English

The Pelican Brief is a 1993 legal crime thriller film based on the novel of the same name by John Grisham. Directed by Alan J. Pakula, the film stars Julia Roberts in the role of young law student Darby Shaw and Denzel Washington as Washington Herald reporter Gray Grantham.

Plot

Two Supreme Court justices are assassinated. A terrorist named Khamel, who works as a hired assassin, shoots one of the justices as he lies in his sickbed. He strangles the other in a gay porn film theater. The two had been very different in their voting patterns and opinions in cases that had come before them. Tulane University Law School student Darby Shaw theorizes that there may be some similarity in their otherwise-different voting patterns that may provide a motive for their assassinations. She discovers that both were protective of the environment (the only subject the two agreed on) in their votes. Her research also reveals that the Fifth Circuit, contrary to the interest of an oil company owned by Victor Mattiece, had ruled in favor of protecting an expanse of wetlands in Louisiana used by pelicans and other wildlife as a habitat.

The Supreme Court was expected to eventually hear the corporation's appeal of that Fifth Circuit ruling; but now, two pro-environment justices who have been assassinated will not be able to take part in any Supreme Court vote on the appeal, and oil magnate Mattiece (a close friend of and political contributor to the President) hopes to have pro-oil justices named as their replacements.

Washington Herald reporter Gray Grantham, who covered the assassination story of Rosenberg & Jensen, receives a mysterious phone call one morning from a lawyer identifying himself only as Garcia. He says that he may have stumbled across something related to the murders, but is afraid to divulge any details. He hangs up before giving Grantham any substantive information, but Grantham is able to trace the call.

Darby decides to research who might have been responsible for the murders, and writes her theories into a paper which she shows to her law professor. He, in turn, gives it to Gavin Verheek, a friend of his in the FBI, so that he can examine the theory contained in the paper (which becomes known as the "Pelican Brief"). Not long after this, her law professor is killed by a car bomb. Darby survives only because she refused to get into the car with her drunken professor. In the aftermath, a man claiming to be a New Orleans police officer named Rupert asks Darby the name of her friend who was killed and tells her to stay in his car where she will be safe. When she talks to the real police, however, she discovers that there is no officer named Rupert and that the tags on his car were fake.

Afraid that she'll be the next target, Darby goes on the run. She walks out of the hospital where she has been taken and checks herself into a hotel. She contacts Verheek to seek protection, and they arrange a meeting. Unfortunately, his phone has been bugged. Khamel murders him and prepares to meet Darby in his place. In a turn of events, Rupert, who turns out to be working for the CIA, shoots Khamel in the back of the head as Khamel is holding Darby's hand and preparing to kill her. Darby, who believes that she was with Verheek, is highly traumatized.

She decides to go to Gray Grantham in order to publicize her ideas. After escaping from New Orleans, she meets him in New York and gives him the details of her brief from memory. Grantham tells her about Garcia, and she recalls two law firms that have done work for Mattiece. They decide to try to locate the man. By posing as an employee from White & Blazevich, Darby collects names and addresses of law students who interned at the firm. She and Grantham track them down in the hope that one of them will recognize a photograph of "Garcia", whom Grantham photographed when Garcia returned to call him from the same pay phone. The last one, who is currently in a mental hospital, recognizes the man as Curtis Morgan, a lawyer in the oil and gas division.

Darby visits White & Blazevich pretending to have an appointment with Curtis Morgan. When she is told that he was killed by muggers, she knows that his discovery of the incriminating memo was the reason. The lawyers are clearly suspicious, and Darby hurries out of the office.

She and Grantham pay a visit to Morgan's widow, but her father refuses to let them talk to her so Grantham leaves his card. He receives a call from Mrs. Morgan early the next morning, and when they meet on her back patio, she reveals that she found among her husband's things a key to a safe-deposit box at a bank they had never used. She is not ready to see what is in it, but gives the key to Grantham. Around the corner, a man listens to their conversation with a long-distance microphone.

While Darby visits the bank to retrieve the contents of the box, she is followed and a bomb is planted in her car, which is parked in an underground parking garage. When she and Grantham return to their vehicle, she reads the letter from Morgan and the copy of the memo that he found. Grantham has difficulty starting the car, and Darby recognizes the faltering sound as what she heard just before her professor was killed. She stops him and they flee the vehicle. They are instantly pursued on foot and by a car, which finally crashes into their parked vehicle, detonating the bomb and killing their pursuer.

They escape to the Washington Herald building, where they review the documents and a videotape from Morgan's box. With the evidence that he needs, Grantham writes his story. He gives the FBI a chance to comment, and Director Voyles comes to meet with him personally. Voyles confirms that the Pelican Brief was delivered to the White House, but forbids Grantham to publish that the President interfered with the investigation. He tells Darby that the CIA were investigating Mattiece, and that one of them killed Khamel to save her life. She asks Voyles to give her a flight out of the country, stipulating that she, Grantham, and the pilot be the only people on the plane and that she inform the pilot of their destination only after takeoff.

In a dark, empty hangar, Darby and Grantham board a plane and fly to an undisclosed location. Upon arrival, they are given a copy of the day's Herald with their story and many related articles on the front page. Darby hugs Grantham goodbye before getting into a van and vanishing. Finally, we see Darby in her new safehouse watching Grantham being interviewed by a television news station. She smiles as he deflects questions about her identity, and we are left with the impression that they may meet again.

Characters

• Darby Shaw (Julia Roberts) - second year Tulane University Law School student; author of the brief
• Gray Grantham (Denzel Washington) - reporter for the fictional Washington Herald
• Fletcher Cole (Tony Goldwyn) - White House Chief of Staff; unofficial head of power
• Khamel "Sam" (Stanley Tucci) - international assassin
• Thomas Callahan (Sam Shepard) - Tulane law school professor; romantically involved with Darby Shaw
• Gavin Verheek (John Heard) - lawyer, special counsel to the FBI director; friend to Thomas Callahan
• F. Denton Voyles (James Sikking) - Director of the FBI
• Alice Stark (Cynthia Nixon) - Darby Shaw's friend
• Bob Gminski (William Atherton) - CIA Director
• The President (Robert Culp) - elected U.S. President whose name is unspecified and is always referred to as "the President"; delegates many administrative duties to Fletcher Coal
• Smith Keen (John Lithgow) - Gray Grantham's boss and Editor of the fictional Washington Herald
• Justice Rosenberg (Hume Cronyn) - eldest, most controversial Supreme Court Justice
• Justice Jensen (Ralph Cosham) - youngest Supreme Court Justice; apparently homosexual
• Curtis Morgan (aka Garcia) (Jake Weber)^[1] - lawyer for White & Blazovitch who stumbles across an incriminating memo, costing him his life.

Trivia

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (March 2009)

• The rights to "The Pelican Brief" were bought before the book was even written, John Grisham had written a sample from the book and the rights were bought on the spot.

• The President questions Cole's idea of addressing the nation while wearing a cardigan sweater; this is based on a real-life incident in which then-president Jimmy Carter addressed the nation in a cardigan during the height of the fuel shortages in the 1970s.

• Victor Mattiece, the main villain, is never seen. Grisham's entire subplot of his behind-the-scenes machinations are totally absent from the movie.

• In the novel Gray Grantham is white (as evidenced by physical descriptions of the character) and works for the Washington Post. The producers were unable to obtain permission from the Post to use its name in the film, and thus Herald was substituted for it.

References

External links

• The Pelican Brief at the Internet Movie Database