An average movie

To be honest, I always had some mixed feelings about this flick. First of all, even though the John Grisham’s books adapations were really popular in the 90’s, I have to admit those were quite entertaining but I also find them always terribly far-fetched. Still, from a marketing level, this was a smart move. Indeed, after ‘Pretty Woman’, Julia Roberts was the most popular actress in the world and Denzel Washington was also becoming a very strong value and combined with John Grisham’s current best-seller power, it was a great combo. Still, as pointed out by Roger Ebert, it is rather sad that the guy behind ‘All the President's Men’, one of the greatest thrillers ever made, would eventually end up with a decent but still rather straightforward flick like this one. And, of course, you have the fact that even though, in the book, there was some romance going on between the leads, nothing like this happens in the movie. You might argue that it is always rather stupid that, in most of the thrillers, the main characters usually end up in bed but, in this case, it is pretty obvious that if they would have replaced Denzel Washington with Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt, you could be sure that some romantic angle would have been added. To conclude, even though I’m not a fan, I have to admit that it is still a fairly entertaining feature and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

6/10