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THE FIRM
The Firm is a slick and expensive suspense thriller from 1993 that might play some of its cards a little too quickly, but it's a pretty entertaining ride for the most part thanks to razor sharp direction and a superb cast.
Tom Cruise stars as Mitch McDeere, a wide-eyed recent Harvard Law School graduate who is married to a beautiful school teacher named Abby (Jeanne Tripplehorn) who is being courted by some of the country's top law firms but is made an offer he can't refuse from a firm in Memphis called Bendini, Lambert, & Locke who want Mitch so badly that they offer him a job before he has even passed the bar. Abby senses that the lavish life being thrown at them by this firm is a little too good to be true, but Mitch tries to look the other way at her concerns but it is soon revealed that this firm has a dark side...apparently a handful of attorneys who tried to leave the firm are now dead and Mitch's discovery of the truth might be putting him and Abby in danger as well.
The film is based on a novel by John Grisham, the king of legal thrillers and has been crafted into a wordy but intelligent screenplay by David Rabe, David Rayfiel, and Oscar winner Robert Towne that does provide a spark of originality in that the alleged evil bubbling under the surface here is first hinted at through the protagonist's wife. We are provided subtle clues that something is not right here when Abby is informed that the firm doesn't "forbid" her from working and encourages her to start a family right away. Customarily, it is the wife who is left in the dark in stories like this, but not here. I loved the fact that Abby senses the wrong long before her husband does.
My only problem with the story is that we are only at the halfway point of the film when we become privy to exactly what is going on and find Mitch has been put in an impossible position of loyalty to his shady employers. who are so greasy your hands would slide off of them and the feds who are also forcing Mitch's hand in bringing them down. What Mitch has to do at this point isn't much of a stretch, but we still have over 90 minutes of screen time that makes the journey to a pat conclusion a little labored.
What the film does have going for it is crisp and stylish direction by Sidney Pollack that almost allows the viewer to forgive some dangling plot points, not to mention the brilliant cast Pollack has assembled to serve this complex but compelling story. Cruise is solid and Tripplehorn brings a strength and intelligence to Abby we really don't see coming. The brilliant supporting cast is led by Gene Hackman, robbed of an Oscar nomination for his dazzling turn as Avery Tolar, Mitch's mentor at the firm whose agenda seems to change from scene to scene. Hal Holbrook, Ed Harris, David Straithairn, Jerry Hardin, Wilford Brimley, Gary Busey, and Steven Hill provide solid support as well. The film received two Oscar nominations, one for Holly Hunter's scene-stealing performance as a not-as-dumb-as-she-appears secretary and for Dave Grusin's jazzy piano score. It goes on a little longer than it should, but it's glossy and suspenseful fun most of the way.
The Firm is a slick and expensive suspense thriller from 1993 that might play some of its cards a little too quickly, but it's a pretty entertaining ride for the most part thanks to razor sharp direction and a superb cast.
Tom Cruise stars as Mitch McDeere, a wide-eyed recent Harvard Law School graduate who is married to a beautiful school teacher named Abby (Jeanne Tripplehorn) who is being courted by some of the country's top law firms but is made an offer he can't refuse from a firm in Memphis called Bendini, Lambert, & Locke who want Mitch so badly that they offer him a job before he has even passed the bar. Abby senses that the lavish life being thrown at them by this firm is a little too good to be true, but Mitch tries to look the other way at her concerns but it is soon revealed that this firm has a dark side...apparently a handful of attorneys who tried to leave the firm are now dead and Mitch's discovery of the truth might be putting him and Abby in danger as well.
The film is based on a novel by John Grisham, the king of legal thrillers and has been crafted into a wordy but intelligent screenplay by David Rabe, David Rayfiel, and Oscar winner Robert Towne that does provide a spark of originality in that the alleged evil bubbling under the surface here is first hinted at through the protagonist's wife. We are provided subtle clues that something is not right here when Abby is informed that the firm doesn't "forbid" her from working and encourages her to start a family right away. Customarily, it is the wife who is left in the dark in stories like this, but not here. I loved the fact that Abby senses the wrong long before her husband does.
My only problem with the story is that we are only at the halfway point of the film when we become privy to exactly what is going on and find Mitch has been put in an impossible position of loyalty to his shady employers. who are so greasy your hands would slide off of them and the feds who are also forcing Mitch's hand in bringing them down. What Mitch has to do at this point isn't much of a stretch, but we still have over 90 minutes of screen time that makes the journey to a pat conclusion a little labored.
What the film does have going for it is crisp and stylish direction by Sidney Pollack that almost allows the viewer to forgive some dangling plot points, not to mention the brilliant cast Pollack has assembled to serve this complex but compelling story. Cruise is solid and Tripplehorn brings a strength and intelligence to Abby we really don't see coming. The brilliant supporting cast is led by Gene Hackman, robbed of an Oscar nomination for his dazzling turn as Avery Tolar, Mitch's mentor at the firm whose agenda seems to change from scene to scene. Hal Holbrook, Ed Harris, David Straithairn, Jerry Hardin, Wilford Brimley, Gary Busey, and Steven Hill provide solid support as well. The film received two Oscar nominations, one for Holly Hunter's scene-stealing performance as a not-as-dumb-as-she-appears secretary and for Dave Grusin's jazzy piano score. It goes on a little longer than it should, but it's glossy and suspenseful fun most of the way.