‘The Client’

The combination of director Joel Schumacher’s eye for mass public appeal and novelist John Grisham’s best-selling sensibility produced this 1994 film that is probably truer to the spirit of the novel than the adaptations of other Grisham books. Not particularly nuanced or fine-tuned, “The Client,” like its source material, is both gimmicky and involving, a fast-moving comic-book version of a comic-book novel. It is beefed up by a pair of satisfying star performances by Susan Sarandon (center), who won an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a diamond-in-the-rough lawyer protecting a bratty 11-year-old (Brad Renfro) from the Mafia, and Tommy Lee Jones (right) as the ambitious federal prosecutor who would use the boy to get his mob man. Even though much of what is seen isn’t convincing, that doesn’t stop us from caring how it all turns out. With William Sanderson (left) (HBO Tuesday at 8 p.m.).