The Firm

This is a long (154 minutes) but pretty solid drama-suspense story about corporate corruption. The film features a well-known cast, and as soon as the action kicks in this becomes a very tense story.

Tom Cruise is very good as the hotshot lawyer, as is Jeanne Tripplehorn who plays his unhappy wife. This is a complex story at times, one not always easily understood, especially the ending. So much is explained so fast at the end it's tough to comprehend it all.

Wilfred Brimley, Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook, Holly Hunter, Robert Strathairn and Ed Harris all make this a really deep, impressive cast. For more details of the story, check some of the other reviews.

I wanted to get a copy of the screenplay to compare the movie with the dialog and directions, but initially received the FIRST draft by David Rabe. I finally got the shooting script later. All I can say is that it ended with Mc Deere blowing away all the partners in a restaurant with an AK-47. It really made me appreciate the re-write by David Rayfiel and Robert Towne. I have watched this movie many times and enjoy the suspense, romance, and Grusin's solo piano score, which always blows me away. But the one thing that impressed me most with multiple viewing, is how Gene Hackman really makes the movie work. His portrayal of this corrupt, but incredably likeable character is the one thread that holds the movie together for me and goes down as one of his most memorable acting performances.

Tom Cruise is as competent as ever in this Sydney Pollack-directed law film. I would put his film Three Days of the Condor ahead of this one though because the Firm lacks much of the excitement and well-plotted story beats. There are a few moments of suspense, but a lot of is it pretty slow-moving. The cast is fantastic though with several standout performances. The score, while good, felt very out of place in several scenes. This was also probably at least half an hour too long. The Firm is a slightly above average thriller from the 90s that provides a good starring role for Tom Cruise.

The Firm (1993)

The twist in the plot as you realize this Memphis law firm is not what it seems, and the rather innocent freshman lawyer played by Tom Cruise is slow to catch on, is the core of the movie, and a relief. It starts steadily, or slowly, depending on your patience, and in fact plays many scenes out in more detail than we need for a kind of bookish thriller. It's not a bad ride, and there are some further, minor twists, but it's not packed tightly enough, or frankly original enough, to lift its boots out of the sand.

Director Sydney Pollack, hugely successful as a director and actor, might have just had bad scriptwriting here by David Rabe, because John Grisham's book had proved itself. The acting is really solid (I'm no Cruise fan, but he's fine), but the characters are often doing things that just don't quite follow, or that are improbable or stupid. Or they end up doing something dangerous and the danger is either watered down or ridiculous. Examples that come to mind are how they show Cruise discovering or stealing or xeroxing files. We get the plot, but it lumbers along, or is just shown, not built up with suspense. The cinematographer takes a hit here, I think. Things are often nicely framed and routinely well done, but a thriller needs to hide some things, show some things, create ambiance and mystery, and so on, visually. It doesn't really happen.

So, for a kind of technical high-stakes, rich person's good-guy bad-guy suspense film, it will get you through, but barely. By the last five minutes, if you aren't sucked in, you'll want to scream "hurry up!"

When "The Firm" came out was - believe it or not - the first time that I had ever heard of Tom Cruise (although I didn't see the movie until several years later). And let me tell you, this was a great introduction. Cruise plays novice lawyer Mitch McDeere, who goes to work for a Memphis firm. With this firm, he has everything that anyone could want. But there's the question: why does everything seem so perfect? The answer lies in the firm's unseemly other side. And they're not just going to let Mitch blow their cover.

Sydney Pollack pulled off everything perfectly here. It's sort of like an Ira Levin novel how everything plays out. You may be suspicious of everything after seeing this movie. Above all, it shows that Tom Cruise can actually do a good job when he tries. Also starring Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook, Wilford Brimley, Ed Harris, Holly Hunter, David Strathairn and Gary Busey.

It's hard to believe that this was the first movie adaptation of a John Grisham novel.