---
title: "The Pelican Brief"
year: 1993
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-pelican-brief"
fi1m_id: "the-pelican-brief"
imdb_id: "tt0107798"
tmdb_id: 9944
wikidata_id: "Q728404"
fi1m_score: 63
critics_score: 61
critics_reviews: 9
published: "2026-10-04T23:12:01.089624+00:00"
updated: "2026-10-04T23:12:02.008914+00:00"
region: "VN"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Pelican Brief (1993)

Directed by Alan J. Pakula · 2h 21m · Thriller, Crime, Drama

## Identity

The Pelican Brief

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/the-pelican-brief
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** the-pelican-brief
- **IMDb ID:** tt0107798
- **TMDB ID:** 9944
- **Wikidata ID:** Q728404
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107798/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/9944, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q728404

**Fi1m score: 63** · Critics 61 from 9 reviews

*In a sentence:* Everyone in Washington is lying and Denzel Washington is the only one taking notes

> Alan J. Pakula brings his old paranoid-thriller skills to John Grisham’s airport novel, and for an hour it works: handsome, tense, properly frightening. Then it settles into explanation, keeps its two stars apart too long, and runs twenty minutes past its welcome.

## Synopsis

Washington, DC. Two Supreme Court justices, among them the elderly Justice Rosenberg (Hume Cronyn), are murdered on the same night by a hired killer, Khamel (Stanley Tucci). In New Orleans, Tulane law student Darby Shaw (Julia Roberts) spends a weekend in the library and writes a speculative brief tying the killings to a court case about pelican habitat and the oil beneath it. Her professor and lover Thomas Callahan (Sam Shepard) passes it to an FBI friend, Gavin Vereek (John Heard), and from there it travels to the White House and the chief of staff, Fletcher Coal (Tony Goldwyn). Then a car bomb goes off outside a New Orleans bar, and Darby runs. In Washington, Herald reporter Gray Grantham (Denzel Washington) is taking calls from a frightened source who will give only the name Garcia.

## Review

Two Supreme Court justices are killed in one night, a law student in New Orleans works out why, and everyone who reads her theory starts dying. That is John Grisham’s novel, and Alan J. Pakula, who made *All the President’s Men*, is the right man to film it: nobody has shot Washington’s corridors with more dread. *The Pelican Brief* is a decent, good-looking thriller with two stars who are a pleasure to watch. It is also 141 minutes long, and for the second half of them it is mostly people in rooms telling each other what we already know.

The opening is the best of it. Stephen Goldblatt lights Justice Rosenberg’s house so that the old man (Hume Cronyn, asleep in a chair with a blanket over his knees) is a small pale shape in a brown room, and Stanley Tucci’s Khamel comes out of the dark behind him without a sound. Tucci says almost nothing and is the more alarming for it. We were properly frightened in those first ten minutes, and it was the quiet that did it: no music, no struggle, a killer who knows exactly where everything is.

Julia Roberts carries the next hour on her own, and she is good at being hunted. Her Darby Shaw is clever, but mostly she is scared, in doorways and hotel lobbies and on the back of a streetcar, and Roberts plays fear as something that makes a person precise rather than hysterical. She cuts her hair short and dyes it dark, and Albert Wolsky puts her in borrowed-looking jackets and bought-this-morning dresses so that she looks like someone else every twenty minutes. Denzel Washington’s Gray Grantham is introduced early and then visited in fragments while the film waits for the plot to bring the two of them together.

When it does, the film lifts. Washington is relaxed, amused, listening more than he talks, and he makes a reporter’s patience look like a kind of strength. John Lithgow, as his editor Smith Keen, is drily good, a man who wants the story and the lawyers kept happy in the same breath. The scenes of Darby and Gray in hotel rooms, on the phone, in a library with a stack of filings, are the film’s warmest and sharpest. Pakula also refuses to let them touch. There is a moment near a window where any other film of the period would have cut to a kiss, and this one cuts to a car.

The conspiracy is explained in meetings. Tony Goldwyn’s Fletcher Coal runs the White House with a smile that never reaches his voice, Robert Culp’s President is vague and golfing and happy to be managed, and James Sikking’s FBI director Voyles and William Atherton’s CIA man Gminski trade warnings across a table. All well played, all there to say a paragraph of plot. Philip Rosenberg gives them handsome offices, dark wood and green lamps and venetian blinds, and Goldblatt shoots the capital in long lenses from across streets, as though someone were always watching. What is missing is the sense, so strong in *All the President’s Men*, that the buildings themselves are in on it. Here the menace is in the dialogue, and dialogue can be paused.

James Horner’s score is piano and low synthesiser, a mournful tune for Darby and a tick for the chases, and it is mixed with tact. Tom Rolf and Trudy Ship cut the pursuits cleanly, and cut the rest as if under instruction not to lose a single clause. Somewhere around the two-hour mark we were working out how much was left, and we were a little cross about it, because the film had earned our attention in its first hour and was now spending it on a man reading a document aloud.

It is not a bad evening. The leads are good together and the villains are a well-stocked cupboard of 1990s character actors. Watch it at home on a wet night, where the hotel-room stretches feel companionable rather than slow, and forgive it the length. It carries a 12 certificate and almost no blood, which, given how many people it kills, is rather Washington’s style too.

*Fi1m score 63, published 4 October 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics land in the middle on this one, and what warmth there is goes almost entirely to the two leads. Roberts and Washington are singled out repeatedly, even by reviewers who think little of the film around them; Turan at the Los Angeles Times, no admirer of the picture, still likes their rapport. The dense plotting and legal detail carried over from Grisham earn credit, as does the supporting cast. Variety stands alone in calling the execution close to flawless.

The reservations cluster on pace and structure. Several reviews find the plot murky and the film slow to catch fire, and Empire notes that Washington is kept off screen too long, a complaint the Guardian sharpens into a wasted part. The spread is wide, from outright enthusiasm to two dismissals, with a later home-video notice calling it plainly mediocre. The consensus is a competent, star-led thriller that few critics defend with much energy.

## Straight answers

**Is The Pelican Brief worth watching?**

*The Pelican Brief* is worth watching for anyone who likes a handsome 1990s conspiracy thriller and can forgive a slow second half, and we scored it 63. The opening hour is tense and properly frightening, and Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington are good together once the plot finally lets them meet. It runs 141 minutes and spends too many of them in rooms explaining itself.

**How long is The Pelican Brief, and what is it rated?**

*The Pelican Brief* runs 2h 21m. It is a thriller and crime film.

**Where can I watch The Pelican Brief in Vietnam?**

*The Pelican Brief* is not on any streaming or rental service in Vietnam at the moment. It is available in 27 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily.

**Is The Pelican Brief based on a true story or a book?**

*The Pelican Brief* is based on John Grisham's novel of the same name, not on a true story; the murdered justices, the law student and the oil conspiracy are fiction. Alan J. Pakula's film follows the book's airport-thriller plot, and reading it first is not necessary, though it may help you keep track of who is briefing whom in the second half.

**What should I watch after The Pelican Brief?**

After *The Pelican Brief*, try [*All the President's Men*](https://film.one/film/all-the-presidents-men) (1976, Fi1m 90): Pakula’s own reporters-in-a-newsroom thriller, where the dread lives in the architecture. Then [*The Firm*](https://film.one/film/the-firm) (1993, Fi1m 71): The other Grisham film of its year, slicker, sillier and better paced; and [*Three Days of the Condor*](https://film.one/film/three-days-of-the-condor) (1975, Fi1m 80): Robert Redford reads books for the CIA and comes back from lunch to find everyone dead.

### Reviews we read (9)

- **Variety**, Brian Lowry (91/100, inferred): Lowry gives the thriller an enthusiastic verdict, praising its taut, intelligent adaptation and near-flawless execution. He especially singles out Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, whose performances anchor the film. [Read](https://variety.com/1993/film/reviews/the-pelican-brief-1200434789/)
- **Radio Times**, John Ferguson (4/5): Ferguson describes the film as following a formula established by earlier Grisham adaptations. He singles out its dense plotting, legal detail, charismatic leads and star-studded supporting cast. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-yr295w/the-pelican-brief/)
- **Empire**, Angie Errigo (65/100, inferred): Errigo finds the adaptation solid, intelligent and entertaining, though ultimately unspectacular. She praises the casting and highlights its nail-biting set pieces, while noting structural shakiness that keeps Denzel Washington off screen too long. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/pelican-brief-review/)
- **The New Yorker**, Anthony Lane (64/100, inferred): Anthony Lane’s Current Cinema column reviews The Pelican Brief alongside Philadelphia. The available page does not show his verdict or what he singles out for praise or complaint. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/12/27)
- **The New York Times**, Janet Maslin (64/100, inferred): The page is inaccessible, so the critic’s verdict cannot be verified. The headline frames the film as a contemporary Nancy Drew story, but the review’s specific praise or complaints are unavailable. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/17/movies/review-film-presenting-nancy-drew-for-the-90-s.html)
- **Time Out**, TCh (64/100, inferred): The accessible page provides no verdict. It does not reveal what the critic singled out for praise or complaint. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-pelican-brief-1)
- **The Guardian** (35/100, inferred): The critic finds Pakula’s adaptation lightweight and ultimately unimpressive. They criticize Washington’s wasted role while noting Roberts’s familiar startled-fawn performance. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/movie/51190/pelican-brief)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Kenneth Turan (30/100, inferred): Turan finds the thriller a fizzle, with a murky plot and a sluggish pace that keep it from catching fire. He praises Roberts and Washington’s pleasant on-screen rapport, though he says the supporting cast gives them little help. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-12-17-ca-2773-story.html)
- **Den of Geek**, Louis Turfrey (2 out of 5): Turfrey finds the film mediocre and the Blu-ray release disappointing. He praises the clean, crisp picture transfer but criticizes the lack of extras. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-pelican-brief-blu-ray-review/)

## Details

- **Director:** Alan J. Pakula
- **Director:** Alan J. Pakula
- **Screenplay:** Alan J. Pakula
- **Novel:** John Grisham
- **Cinematography:** Stephen Goldblatt
- **Editor:** Tom Rolf, Trudy Ship
- **Music:** James Horner
- **Production design:** Philip Rosenberg
- **Costume design:** Albert Wolsky
- **Producer:** Pieter Jan Brugge, Alan J. Pakula
- **Cast:** Julia Roberts as Darby Shaw; Denzel Washington as Gray Grantham; Sam Shepard as Thomas Callahan; John Heard as Gavin Vereek; Tony Goldwyn as Fletcher Coal; James Sikking as Denton Voyles; William Atherton as Bob Gminski; Robert Culp as The President
- **Runtime:** 2h 21m
- **First release (Canada):** 17 September 1993
- **Genres:** Thriller, Crime, Drama
- **Budget:** $45 million
- **Box office:** $195 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgmItLPfdO4

## Where to watch in Vietnam

Not streaming, renting or buying in Vietnam at the last check.

Also available in: AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CL, CO, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, HR, IE, IN, IT, LT, NL, NO, NZ, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *All the President's Men* (1976), Fi1m 90: Pakula’s own reporters-in-a-newsroom thriller, where the dread lives in the architecture. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/all-the-presidents-men.md)
- *The Firm* (1993), Fi1m 71: The other Grisham film of its year, slicker, sillier and better paced. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-firm.md)
- *Three Days of the Condor* (1975), Fi1m 80: Robert Redford reads books for the CIA and comes back from lunch to find everyone dead. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/three-days-of-the-condor.md)
- *Z* (1969), Fi1m 84: Costa-Gavras on a political assassination and the lies told afterwards, at a sprint. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/z.md)
- *Michael Clayton* (2007), Fi1m 86: A law firm, a cover-up and George Clooney at his most tired; grown-up and unhurried. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/michael-clayton.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-pelican-brief