The Client
At the time of filming, author John Grisham had casting approval over all film adaptations of his work, and specified that "no professional child actors in Hollywood" be cast as Mark Sway. He felt that the film wouldn't work with a well-known child actor (sporting a phony accent) in the role and that by casting an unknown in the part (preferably from the Memphis area, where the story is set) the film's credibility wouldn't be compromised. Brad Renfro, a native of Knoxville, Tennessee beat out thousands of actors for the role, including .,Mark steals one cigarette from his mothers purse. Minutes later, when Mark and his younger brother go to the woods to smoke the cigarette, he lights a second cigarette for his brother while Mark is smoking one for himself.,Roy: Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, so sayeth the Psalms!
Judge Harry Roosevelt: That's Proverbs 12:22.,Featured in Siskel & Ebert: The Client/Lassie/It Could Happen to You/North/Barcelona (1994),Heartbreak Hotel
Written by Mae Boren Axton (as Mae Anton), Tommy Durden and Elvis Presley
Produced and Performed by Steve Tyrell,Mark Sway is a real hero here, although he is not only a mere child, but a disadvantaged child in the middle of adult power structures breathtaking in their deviousness and casual cruelty. The theme of youngsters forced by circumstances into adult roles and responsibilities, particularly in being more level-headed and mature than their parent(s) has become as strikingly common in contemporary literature as it was strikingly uncommon until about a generation ago. But there are ample parallels to real life in pre-Romantic history. It is really our modern assumptions of prolonged childhood and adolescence which are abnormal in the fuller perspective of human experience. Aren't we on the verge of these concepts' retreating from the apogees to which western culture pushed them in the 19th and early 20th centuries?

If so, this film is on the cusp of the trend. Yet it might never have worked but for the director's good fortune in locating Brad Renfro for the lead role. What a find! His earthy, protean spunk and obliviousness to any cute brown-nosing towards his elders, simply because they are elders, make him entirely convincing in the part. He is, I hope, on his way to being a great actor, but perhaps it will continue to be this film which shows his freshness most clearly.

Not that it isn't very taut cinema in other regards. The build up of drama in the opening scenes is superb, with acting, cinematography, and the score all combining to provide a seamless experience. As one critic put it, it starts like a house afire, and the fire never goes out. This is a film one can see again and again, noticing additional fine touches each time.,