star-making legal thrills (and lots of Gene Hackman)

Matt Damon’s star status was helped in 1997 by this John Grisham novel adaptation – and now The Rainmaker gets the series treatment with a fresh young lead.

If there is such a thing as starmaking novelist, then John Grisham is it.

Adaptations of his novels have been responsible for anointing new stars, leveling-up existing ones, and generally attracting major actors to a degree that arguably outpaces any other writer whose works are popular with Hollywood.

Grisham became a sensation with the publication of his second novel, The Firm, in 1991, which was followed by a lengthy streak of hits, pretty much all of which became movies. Building on the work of another lawyer-turned-novelist, Scott Turow (Presumed Innocent), Grisham brought a popcorn sensibility to legal thrillers which lent itself to filmed adaptation.

But the reason his works proved to be such a star factory is the manner in which he found new and interesting ways to portray a David and Goliath dynamic. His protagonists were always up against it in seemingly insurmountable situations, which meant the actors in the subsequent adaptations got a prime opportunity to deploy the full power of their movie star-ness, be it emerging or established.

And the Goliaths had a lot of meat to chew on too—Grisham adaptations provided great opportunities for (usually older) stars to chew the scenery as the eloquent antagonists.

These elements all appear to be in place for the new TV series adaptation of The Rainmaker, which previously played a key role in the emergence of Matt Damon as a new star (see below) and is perhaps the purest expression of Grisham’s preoccupation with underdog protagonists.

It bodes well for lead Milo Callaghan, a British actor heretofore most recognisable for his supporting turn in Rivals. He plays Rudy Baylor, a promising young lawyer who gets fired from his white shoe law firm and aligns himself with some bottom-feeders before taking on his former colleagues in a high-stakes wrongful death suit. It’s another prime opportunity for an emerging actor to assert their star power.

The Goliath to Rudy’s David in The Rainmaker is scary defence lawyer Leo F. Drummond, played by John Slattery, who has been on a fantastic tear of late, and whose natural authority seems perfectly suited to John Grisham’s world.

To mark the premiere of this series, we’re noting the various star-making performances in Grisham movies over the years.

After Days of Thunder (1990) and Far and Away (1992) both proved less than mega successful, Tom Cruise bounced back and established his legal bona fides with A Few Good Men (1992). When The Firm became a bestseller, it was clear to everyone who read it that Cruise would be the perfect lead in a film version, yet it still felt like a coup when the production cast him as young Harvard Law graduate Mitch McDeere, who discovers his new employers are mafia lawyers.

The result was prime Grisham (it’s arguably the best film made from his work) and prime Cruise, with the latter’s inherent cockiness informing his overconfident and out-of-his-depth character. Gene Hackman is also in fine form as Mitch’s inscrutable mentor.

Director Joel Schumacher famously threw out a massive net in an effort to place a new talent in the titular role of this adaptation. He ended up casting Brad Renfro as Mark Sway, an eleven-year-old who is randomly present during the suicide of a mob lawyer. With the authorities pressuring Mark to reveal what the man told him with his dying words, Mark engages recovering alcoholic Reggie Love (Susan Sarandon) to represent him, and they square off against grandstanding US Attorney Roy Folltrigg (Tommy Lee Jones).

Jones and Sarandon were both at the height of their powers, but the film belongs to Renfro, a heretofore non-actor who gives a remarkably assured debut performance, setting up a career that was tragically cut short when Renfro died approximately a decade later.

Dazed & Confused (1993) introduced the world to a raft of major stars, but none more incandescent than Matthew McConaughey. Although it seemingly took a little while for Hollywood to cotton on, as it was a couple of years later that he was anointed with the lead role in this adaptation of Grisham’s first book, which became a bestseller following the success of The Firm.

The studio was clearly nervous about the casting, as they placed McConaughey below better-known co-stars Sandra Bullock and Samuel L. Jackson on the poster, but the nascent leading man very much proved himself as a lawyer (based on Grisham himself) defending Jackson on charges of killing the men who raped and murdered his daughter.

Released just a couple of months before Matt Damon officially became a Big Deal in Good Will Hunting, his casting here helped solidify Hollywood’s faith in the young actor who, like Cruise, seemed well-suited to Grisham’s sensibilities.

The plot has Damon’s Baylor taking on a health insurance company in a civil suit, with Jon Voight playing his legal antagonist and Danny DeVito playing his ally. I am pleased to discover underrated character actor P.J. Byrne (The Boys) is playing DeVito’s role in the new series adaptation.

Other Grisham adaptations with starmaking roles include The Pelican Brief (1994), where Julia Roberts asserted her ’90s dominance as a young lawyer targeted by various factions after the assassination of some Supreme Court justices, helped by journalist Denzel Washington.

1996’s The Chamber sees Chris O’Donnell play a young lawyer attempting to get his klansman grandfather (Gene Hackman again) off death row, while in 2003’s Runaway Jury, John Cusack and Rachel Weisz manipulate the jury process in a legal battle against Dustin Hoffman and… Gene Hackman.