The Firm

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!"

Tom Cruise, the All American kid from the trailer park who worked his way through Harvard Law School, just got the dream job with a prestigious white shoe law firm in Memphis, Tennessee. Sounds like he's on his way to the top with wife Jeanne Tripplehorn. But it turns out to be a nightmare.

This Firm's main client is a Chicago crime family and they launder the mob's money. Now the FBI in the persons of fatherly Steven Hill and hard-nosed Ed Harris are squeezing Cruise to infiltrate and get incriminating information. That would result in disbarment for violating lawyer/client privilege. And The Firm isn't a gang of boy scouts either. They're not above a little blackmail and entrapment and they've got a security man in Wilford Brimley who's real good at it.

How Tom Cruise gets out of this rock and a hard place situation is the plot of The Firm. Sydney Pollak gave him one stylish cast in support and everyone of them delivers. Even players like Gary Busey, Hal Holbrook, Gene Hackman, take essentially supporting roles because this film was a guaranteed blockbuster. All of John Grisham's novels have their own built in audience, The Firm is no exception. I do remember my mother was a devoted reader of his work, whereas I always await the film version.

Holly Hunter got an Oscar nomination for her small role as private detective Gary Busey's secretary and girl Friday. When Hunter witnesses Busey's murder without the hit men knowing it, she sets the wheels in motion for the downfall of the bad guys. Hunter got nominated for Best Actress for The Piano and Best Supporting Actress for The Firm, a most unusual occurrence. She won for The Piano in 1993, but lost the Supporting Actress Award to her co-star in The Piano, Anna Paquin. Winning both would have just been a bit too much for the Academy voters.

The Firm has a far fetched plot to be sure in the way that Tom Cruise brings them all down. Still that's the charm of it. It's almost Hitchcockian in its pace and mood, and even more resembles the Mission Impossible television series in the way it's all brought off. Small wonder that Tom Cruise was chosen to star in the big screen adaptations of that television classic.

When I watch The Firm, I'm reminded of that line from another television classic that one Hannibal Smith used to say about he loved it when a plan comes together. That's what you will like about The Firm.

Though not the best of the Grisham adaptations, this is up to the usual high standard in plot and stars that Grisham movies have become associated with. The plot on this one is a little more far-fetched probably on account of the fact that this was one of Grisham's first works, escapism and entertainment seem to be the most prominent here, other Grisham works had begun to develop other traits alongside populism, like being almost topical and seeming to make social comment on issues that Grisham must have had an inside eye on when he was actually involved in the legal business for all those years. The Rainmaker is a great example of this when a young lawyer takes on a pro bono case of a widow's suit against a rogue insurance company that wouldn't pay up on a claim for her son's illness, and who as a result died from it. You will find none of this in the Firm, it is the straightforward story of a young lawyer whose life becomes entangled in the law firm from hell, which has all the usual mafia connections and all the usual FBI hardball characters battling with the caricatures from the Mafia. It does however make great entertainment , you will soon forget how far-fetched and improbable it all is, as you will become instantly fascinated, and stick with 155 minutes of plot twists and turns.

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.

In this excitingly convoluted genre piece by Sydney Pollack---who blossomed into a straightforwardly commercial director who was happily a part of the commercial mainstream, unlike such surviving contemporaries as Sidney Lumet and Woody Allen---Tom Cruise plays Mitch McDeere, a poor boy who is embarrassed by his meager roots now that he has graduated from Harvard Law fifth in his class. He gets offers from the top law firms in New York and Chicago, yet ultimately opts for a smaller firm stationed in Memphis. His choice is money-minded. He regards money as peace of mind, however later in the film he is less certain than he's ever been of how flush he'd need to have to be truly at peace.

Some movies about the law reduce the judiciary elements to the rank of incidental. This one squeezes them for all they're worth. Without betraying too much of the story, I can say that McDeere is soon enough being blackmailed by both the FBI and the firm's security chief, grizzled and mild Wilford Brimley, quite compelling in an unusual jaunt as a bad guy. To protect himself, Mitch has to exercise both mind and body, eluding hit men and outwitting lawyers, to save both his life and his license to practice law.

Drawn from the novel by John Grisham, as adapted by three of the most high-priced screenwriters at the time, this star-studded suspense melodrama takes an admirable two and a half hours to work its way through a hair-splitting ethical hodgepodge. By the finale, regardless of McDeere's gasping expounding during phone calls in the middle of a chase sequence, his plan of action is bewildering. And then there is the one character who never saw two particular killers when she witnessed another character's death because she was totally enclosed and hidden, which is how she survived, but in a later scene with Mitch, she says she saw the killers and details what they looked like, even the color of one's eyes, the one actually being an albino. However, it doesn't seem as far-fetched as it would were the style of the movie not as competent even when the fine points were bleary.

Sydney Pollack, usually a solid director of easy-going entertainment, liked to make big, demanding movies and he was secure working with huge stars. Whether or not that colors his movies with a sugar-coated worthiness, he utilized them as abbreviated exposition. Case in point: One glance at Hal Holbrook as the top dog of the Firm and we sense it's a suspicious organization. Holbrook almost always plays the ostensibly dignified man with skeletons in his closet. One look at Gene Hackman, as the law partner who becomes Cruise's coach, and we know he's an incredibly faulty yet essentially not such a bad man, as he always is. One look at Cruise and we get a complacent feeling, because he is, in lots of his roles, just a little slow to figure things out. His characters appear to trust people too readily, and so it seems authentic when he accepts the Firm's song and dance and inducements.

The movie is practically a compilation of great small character performances. Ed Harris, menacing with a shaved head, mainly requires little more than a couple of concise appearances to persuasively disclose the FBI's case against the Firm, and to divulge its airy readiness to force a potential witness to undergo impossible duress. Another potent performance is by David Strathairn, as the brother McDeere hasn't told the Firm about. Strathairn has arisen as one of the most commanding character actors around. There are also rich performances by Gary Busey, as an articulate private eye, and especially by Holly Hunter, as his allegiant secretary. Actually, watching this high falutin' legal thriller, it hit me that law firms have to some extent usurped Army platoons as Hollywood's most enjoyed universal human setting. The new law thrillers have the same components as those reliable old World War II action films: Assorted cultural and character archetypes who battle each other when they're not battling the enemy. The law movies have one formidable leg-up: the female characters engage equally in the fray, rather than simply cooking, cleaning and writing letters.

The vast peanut gallery of characters makes The Firm into a persuasive Hollywood landscape. There are enough convincing people here to give McDeere a genuine environment to inhabit. And Pollack was forbearing inwith some ways with his material. He would allow a scene to go on until the point was made somewhat more acutely. That would let an actor like Hackman be stunningly compelling in scenes where he delicately authenticates that, in spite of everything, he has a decent soul. A sensitive scene near the climax between Hackman and Tripplehorn is like an advanced course in acting. The parts of The Firm seem better than the whole. And there are some great parts.