Alan J. Pakula - The Pelican brief (1993)

Two supreme court justices have been killed, and there seem to be no clues to unmask the murderer. Darby Shaw, a law student and an admirer of one of the murdered justices, decides to solve the case. She spends weeks doing research and comes up with a suspect and his possible motives. This brief stirs up a lot of concern in the upper echelons of the government, with waves of anxiety washing as high as the White House. Shaw soon realizes that everyone she shows the brief to seems to end up dead. When she finds herself being followed, she panics and runs. Not knowing whom to trust she turns to Gray Grantham, a reporter for The Washington Herald.

Dos jueces de la Corte Suprema estadounidense han sido asesinados y una solitaria estudiante de derecho formula sus sospechas sobre estas muertes en un informe especulativo que sacude a los más altos estamentos del gobierno. Ella y un decidido periodista de investigación quieren contarle al mundo lo que han destapado… si viven para contarlo. La carrera ha comenzado y ambos son un blanco en movimiento.




The well-crafted plot leaves a trail of clues for the audience to follow, but withholding the juiciest details until the end. And as a surprising twist, the suspense in this movie is not tied up in the identity of Shaw's and Grantham's pursuers, but in the contents of the mysterious document known only as the Pelican Brief. The murderer is revealed early on, and it is the cleverness of motive and depth of intrigue that keeps the story exciting.




Julia Roberts' performance is nearly perfect. She plays the paranoid student believably: She was just as nervous about meeting the good guys as she was meeting the bad guys. At no point does she have the mysterious intuition that the person she is walking off with is about to try to kill her. The audience gets the impression that she is simply a very bright student who stumbled across something she shouldn't have.

Denzel Washington also does a fine job as a reporter for The Washington Herald. We see from the start that he is a determined reporter, when he stakes out a phone booth to get a picture of an anonymous source. At first he treats Shaw as just another story, and it is only after they work together that he develops any sort of relationship with her.




With a beautiful heroine, and a handsome man to save her from peril, it might seem that this is just another film following a formula. But Grisham's genius for tantalizing plot development lifts the movie out of the mediocre muddle. The Pelican Brief thrills in refreshing style.

Ripped with meGUI by supersoft (veinticuatrofps.com) from the Optimum Blu-Ray DVD

Típica película de suspenso, en el aspecto que se engaña al espectador hasta el final en el que se desvela toda la verdad. Sin embargo, la verdad va saliendo a mitad de la película y al final sólo se acaban desvelando algunas lagunas que quedaron en medio.
Lo mejor… Si te pierdes alguna parte de la peli, o no estás atento a alguno de sus múltiples y largos diálogos, puedes perder completamente el hilo de cómo van sucediendo las cosas.
Lo peor… Escenas en que los protagonistas absolutos salen milagrosamente de las situaciones más duras, lo que desgraciadamente hace la película demasiado inverosímil, todo por cautivar y mantener despierto al espectador.

Alan Pakula repite una fórmula que conoce como nadie y siempre le da buenos frutos: combinar suspenso con intriga política. Al director se le suma la historia de John Grisham, el exitoso escritor de obras como Fachada y El Cliente, que también fueron llevadas a la pantalla grande.




Script/Guión: Alan J. Pakula (novel: John Grisham)
Music/Sonido: James Horner
Cinematography/Fotografía: Stephen Goldblatt
Cast/Reparto: Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Tony Goldwyn, John Heard, Sam Shepard, James B. Sikking, John Lithgow, Robert Culp, Hume Cronyn, William Atherton, Robert Culp, Stanley Tucci