Top 5 John Grisham adaptations, ranked

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Best John Grisham Adaptations, Ranked

There's a new TV version of The Rainmaker out, so today, we're ranking the five best John Grisham adaptations - including The Firm, The Pelican Brief, and A Time To Kill. But which one is the very best?

John Grisham

STEPHEN THOMPSON: Courtrooms, briefcases, incriminating documents, a soul crusader against the system-- these are just some of the signs that you might just be watching a movie based on a John Grisham novel.

LINDA HOLMES: A lot of Grisham movies have been really successful, and they've come from some big-time directors. But which ones are the very best? I'm Linda Holmes.

THOMPSON: And I'm Stephen Thompson. Today, we are ranking the best John Grisham adaptations on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. It's just the two of us today. Linda, you wrote a piece for NPR that ranks all of the John Grisham novel adaptations for film and TV. Grisham, of course, is a writer mostly of legal thrillers, including a bunch of bestsellers. There are a ton of adaptations on film and TV, and we're going to talk about your top five.

HOLMES: Sure. Well, I want to say first that the reason why I did this ranking in the first place is that there is a TV adaptation of The Rainmaker, which is really one of his best novels, I think, which is on USA and Peacock. I think it's, like, middle bottom of this list. It doesn't make this top five. If you came to this wanting to hear about that, you can read a little more about it in the piece that I wrote. But I have to clarify a few caveats to this list in honor of lawyers. There are some technicalities that I observed. I really only ranked legal thrillers here. So there is some nonfiction. There is Christmas with the Kranks.

THOMPSON: First thing I looked for with your list.

HOLMES: You can't compare that to the other ones. So I did not do that. I also was not able to include a couple of things that I could not watch, right?

THOMPSON: Not because they were bad, but because they're not available.

HOLMES: Yes, exactly. Did not have access to a pilot for The Street Lawyer that starred Eddie Cibrian. There also was a TV adaptation of The Client that is nowhere. Also, there was a movie called The Gingerbread Man, which was directed by Robert Altman--

THOMPSON: Wow.

HOLMES: --and starred Kenneth Branagh. But that, I discovered, is not an actual Grisham novel. It's a manuscript he never published.

THOMPSON: Oh, OK.

HOLMES: So we're sticking with the novel adaptations from the published legal thriller novels. And like I said, in honor of lawyers, there's just a lot of caveats that you have to be aware of.

THOMPSON: So Holmesy, kick us off with the fifth best Grisham adaptation.

HOLMES: OK. The fifth best is The Client , which is a 1994 drama starring Susan Sarandon as Reggie Love, a lawyer who becomes the representative for a kid named Mark Sway, played by Brad Renfro, who witnesses an event, a death, and then has information about it, but it's related to organized crime, so he's very scared. He's in a lot of peril. And the prosecutor, played by Tommy Lee Jones, is pushing and pushing and pushing him to participate in this prosecution and be a witness. And he's terrified, so he goes and gets a lawyer. So the thing of this one is she's representing a kid up against the system, because his mother is distracted, because his brother is sick, and there's some other stuff. But she becomes kind of his representative. And I like this one because-- mostly because of the performances. This is a nice Susan Sarandon performance as a Grisham hero. And Tommy Lee Jones, this was right after The Fugitive, and he's kind of doing a slimier-- like, this prosecutor is kind of a bad person, not necessarily a fully bad person, but very, like, politically motivated. But he still has that, like, very gruff ordering everybody around. And it's just entertaining.

Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon  (The Client)

THOMPSON: Yeah, I remember this as kind of the height of Tommy Lee Jones and his Tommy Lee Jones-ness.

HOLMES: It's certainly in the thick of it. It's also a really, really nice performance from Brad Renfro. You know, child actors obviously often are not that natural. He's very natural in this movie. He's very, I think, believable and appealing and really seems like a kid. Unfortunately, he died quite young, in his 20s. He's great in this movie, I think. And as with a bunch of these, there are a lot of really fun actors to spot in here. You can spot Bradley Whitford, but just barely. He looks really different. You know, Anthony Edwards is in it. Mary-Louise Parker is in it, playing Mark's mom. And this is directed-- and this is one of the themes of this. This is directed by Joel Schumacher.

THOMPSON: Yeah.

HOLMES: And we'll talk about this more, but, like, these movies really, for a while, were pulling down major, major directors. I already mentioned Robert Altman. And here's Joel Schumacher, who, whatever you think of Joel Schumacher as a director, that was a big deal director at this moment--

THOMPSON: Absolutely.

HOLMES: --in the '90s to kind of pull down for your film. So that's number five, is The Client with Susan Sarandon.

THOMPSON: All right, excellent choice. I don't think I've seen it since it was in theaters--

HOLMES: Yeah.

THOMPSON: --but I remember gobbling it up.

HOLMES: Yeah. It's a fun one. It's a fun one.

THOMPSON: All right. Give me number four.

HOLMES: Number four, I chose A Time to Kill , which--

THOMPSON: Also Joel Schumacher.

Matthew McConaughey, Patrick McGoohan and Samuel L. Jackson  (A Time to Kill)

HOLMES: --is also Joel Schumacher. Now, the thing about A Time to Kill is that A Time to Kill was Grisham's first novel. It just wasn't his first smash novel. His first smash novel was The Firm, but his first novel was A Time to Kill. A Time to Kill is about a guy named Carl Lee Hailey, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who shoots the two men who assaulted his little daughter. They're sort of white supremacist-adjacent guys or racists, and he kills them. And so then Matthew McConaughey-- and this was kind of the Matthew McConaughey arrival performance for a lot of people--

THOMPSON: Yeah.

HOLMES: --plays the lawyer, Jake Brigance, who defends Carl Lee and tries to kind of make the point that wouldn't anybody have done the same thing? Some people love this movie. Some people don't like this movie. It definitely has some very clunky racial politics in it. There's some kind of, I think, dated treatment of how you write a movie like this centered on a white lawyer. But there's some really nice work in this. Samuel L. Jackson is really good in it and has a scene where he kind of explains to Jake, we are not on the same side. The whole reason I picked you is that you can talk to the racists I'm afraid are going to convict me.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

CARL: You see me as different. You see me like that jury sees me. You are them. Now throw out your points of law, Jake. If you was on that jury, what would it take to convince you to set me free?

[END PLAYBACK]

HOLMES: It plays with kind of Jake's alignment in an interesting way, even though Jake thinks of himself as a good guy. This is also, not for nothing, one of the sweatiest movies you will ever see in your entire life, which, again, very Joel Schumacher. Matthew McConaughey and Ashley Judd, who plays his wife, sweat so much in this movie, you could just at any time fill a drinking glass by just mopping them down.

THOMPSON: Not that we recommend it.

HOLMES: No, we should not do that. Also, you know, again, a lot of really nice other performances. Sandra Bullock is very appealing in this as kind of a-- an assistant who sort of shows up to help Jake. And Oliver Platt is great in this as Jake's kind of very cynical friend. Very good in this, very good.

THOMPSON: Oliver Platt really born to do Grisham. This is, you know, summer of 1996, definitely right in the pocket of the Chris Cooper-- you know, of a run of amazing movies that Chris Cooper was in. He was also in Lone Star around this time. He pops up in this film.

HOLMES: He does. He plays a deputy who is also shot in this shooting. So Carl, you know, gets the two guys he meant to get. But he also collaterally really badly injures this deputy. And there's a very interesting willingness of the film, I think, to contend with the fact that even if you think this is an understandable, you know, response from him, kind of a vengeance thing, there are always consequences to those kinds of things that are not always direct. And there's just some good treatment in this film of the fact that Jake also kind of brings consequences on other people for undertaking this defense, and that's kind of part of what he has to take responsibility for and process. And it's an interesting movie. I have misgivings about it, but it's a really--

THOMPSON: Sure.

HOLMES: --interesting movie, and again, a lot of really strong performances. I dig it.

THOMPSON: Nice. That's A Time to Kill. Linda, give us number three.

HOLMES: OK. This is one of the big ones that some of you are going to be waiting for. Number three, I chose The Firm . This was Grisham's big hit novel that kind of became the book that you could be on an airplane and somebody on the airplane would be reading The Firm.

Tom Cruise (The Firm)

THOMPSON: Yeah.

HOLMES: This movie came out in 1993. It stars Tom Cruise in maybe the Grishamiest Grisham story that there is. He plays an attorney named Mitch McDeere, who takes a job with a fancy-pants law firm. And he and his wife go to Memphis, where he's going to work for this firm. And he realizes gradually that the firm is evil and is implicated in all kinds of wrongdoing. Gene Hackman is in multiple Grisham movies. He's also in one called The Chamber. And he's very tragic in this as a sort of tragically compromised attorney. Holly Hunter has a terrific small part in this, as the kind of sidekick secretary to a private investigator played by Gary Busey. And Holly Hunter is tremendous in this. And I have to mention Wilford Brimley as--

THOMPSON: Yes.

HOLMES: --the very dangerous enforcer of the law firm, which is why, when I talk to people about this movie, I always say, Tom Cruise beats Wilford Brimley--

THOMPSON: Yes.

HOLMES: --unconscious with a briefcase. It is amazing. It is-- also, you get to see Tom Cruise, or I assume, Tom Cruise's body double at this time based on how it's shot, although I do not know for sure, doing, like, gymnastics down the street, which is odd, in my opinion.

THOMPSON: You write about this. Like, it has some strange-- some characteristically strange Tom Cruise running.

HOLMES: It does. So if you're one of those people who always watches Mission Impossible movies and thinks that, like, Tom Cruise runs funny in Mission Impossible movies, wait until you see him run in The Firm. And they are hysterical. They have that amazing, slightly out of control Tom Cruise running that we've all grown to love. This is a-- just a really good thriller. This is one that I've come back to many times. I have watched it, you know, probably at least six or seven times, just because it's very satisfying. This is always part of my rotation of what I call trench-coat thrillers, people with documents and people who are very dangerous and scary. This is the Grishamiest Grisham--

THOMPSON: Yes.

HOLMES: --story, in my opinion, even though it's not courtroom, which there's sort of a divide between there are some courtroom ones and some non-courtroom ones.

THOMPSON: Yeah. And even in the absence of a courtroom, you give out a Grisham score at the end of each--

HOLMES: Yes.

THOMPSON: --title in this ranking. You give this movie a 12 out of 10.

HOLMES: I did. I gave this movie a 12 out of 10 for Grishaminess. You can check out the rest of the Grisham scores that I gave in the piece at NPR. But yes, this got a 12 out of 10 because that's how much I feel like this represents Grisham to people. This is sort of what cemented for a lot of people who he is and was. And this one is directed by Sydney Pollack. So again--

THOMPSON: Yes.

HOLMES: --a tremendously great director, a really, like, prominent director making this thriller. Love it. I love it.

THOMPSON: Yeah. Well, speaking of prominent directors, give us your pick for number two.

HOLMES: Number 2, I chose The Rainmaker, which is directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The Rainmaker is a story about a young attorney, played by Matt Damon, who gets out of law school, has very few choices about where to work, and goes to work for a kind of bottom-feeding ambulance chaser played by Mickey Rourke. And when the ambulance chaser skips town, it's just Rudy, the lawyer, and Deck, who is the paralegal played by Danny DeVito, who is great in this. I love him in this. And the two of them set out to represent a family where the son was denied insurance coverage for a bone marrow transplant and is thus very close to the end of his life. And so they're suing the insurance company. And there's sort of a side story about him meeting a woman who is in an abusive marriage. She's played by Claire Danes. And her husband is played by Andrew Shue.

Matt Damon, Danny DeVito and Claire Danes (The Rainmaker)

THOMPSON: Yeah.

HOLMES: I don't care for that story as much. I don't think they have time to make much of it. But Damon is really good as a Grisham lawyer. And his chemistry with Danny DeVito is great. And then you have this lineup of lawyers on the other side of the case. Jon Voight is the king of the lawyers on the other side. And as I said in the piece, not even when he was being eaten by a snake in Anaconda was Jon Voight this slimy, you know?

THOMPSON: [LAUGHS] Not while being devoured by a reptile.

HOLMES: He is so sleazy and so hateful that I really love it. There's a great little bit that involves him and Randy Travis, and that's all I'm going to say. This was during this little point where Randy Travis was going to be an actor.

THOMPSON: Yeah. Yeah.

HOLMES: It's just kind of scrappy and fun, and they're going back and forth, and nobody can really be trusted. And this, in its own way, is also a super Grishamy piece.

THOMPSON: You're getting a lot of, like, A-plus character actors. You're getting people who have done a ton of amazing character work in their career. And you haven't even mentioned people like Dean Stockwell--

HOLMES: Yeah.

THOMPSON: --who was always welcome--

HOLMES: Yeah.

THOMPSON: --in anything he turned up in.

HOLMES: Playing the judge.

THOMPSON: As a judge. Roy Scheider is in this film. I mean--

HOLMES: Roy Scheider is the head of the insurance company, and he is just-- ugh.

THOMPSON: [LAUGHS]

HOLMES: And I think what's great about this is that the evil of this is so boring, the evil that Rudy is up against is so dull, it's just a company that won't do what it should do, and as a result, somebody is dying.

THOMPSON: The banality of evil.

HOLMES: I love the fact that he gets into this kind of grubby-- it's not a fancy kind of evil. It's just a kind of evil that grinds people down. And I very much appreciate his attention to that kind of evil.

THOMPSON: That is The Rainmaker. And now, after the break, we've got one more film we're going to get to. We're going to reveal Linda's number one pick, so stick around.

THOMPSON: Welcome back. Linda Holmes, you have watched a lot of John Grisham movies. You have watched a lot of John Grisham movies a lot of times.

HOLMES: I have.

THOMPSON: I'm going to ask you for your very favorite of them all.

Julia Roberts and Denzell Washington  (The Pelican Brief)

HOLMES: So number one and, you know, Grisham heads-- the Grisham heads out there know this already, I suspect. But number one is The Pelican Brief, which is a fabulous 1993 thriller starring Julia Roberts as Darby Shaw, a law student who discovers-- she just kind of figures out who assassinated two Supreme Court justices and why. And she's just kind of thinking about theories of this. And she comes up with a theory, and she writes it all down. And it kind of passes through different hands, first from people who don't take it too seriously, and then it kind of goes to somebody who realizes that she's correct. And so now she's in big trouble because now they're trying to track her down, these various evil forces, because she's on to them. She connects with a journalist named Gray Grantham, played by Denzel Washington, in a kind of, like, what I think of as, like, one of the really, like, cool Denzel Washington performances that I love. And they are essentially then allies. And he is trying to get the story for the newspaper. He's also trying to keep her and him from getting murdered. Stanley Tucci as a dangerous assassin in some not very good disguises. John Lithgow as the newspaper editor who is basically Ben Bradlee, right, even though not officially. There are a bunch of kind of suspense sequences in this movie that I really love. There's a chase through a garage. There is a very tense moment where she's trying to get information, and she goes to visit a guy who is ill in a hospital. And I think this is just an extremely satisfying film. And this is directed by Alan J. Pakula.

THOMPSON: Right.

HOLMES: He directed All the President's Men. He's one of the kind of great--

THOMPSON: Yes.

HOLMES: --sort of paranoid thriller directors of the '70s. And so it makes so much sense to kind of combine that sensibility with the Grisham sensibility. This one is a 10 on the Grisham scale. This is another one that I cannot tell you how many times I've watched this movie probably at least 10. Love this one. I think everybody in it is really, really good. The Pelican Brief, 1993. If I could tell people to just watch one Grisham legal thriller if they never have, I would say watch The Pelican Brief.

THOMPSON: All right. Well, we want to know your favorite John Grisham adaptation. Find us at facebook.com/pchh and on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture. We'll have a link in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Linda Holmes, thanks so much for being here, buddy.

HOLMES: Thank you.