‘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. It is beefed up by a pair of satisfying star performances by Susan Sarandon, 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 as the ambitious federal prosecutor who would use the boy to get his mob man (Cinemax Tuesday at 3 p.m.).