The Firm

Based on the book by John Grisham, The Firm follows Tom Cruise’s Mitch McDeere as he and his wife (Jeanne Tripplehorn’s Abby) move to Memphis after he accepts a job with a small yet prestigious law firm – with the movie detailing Mitch’s creeping suspicion that his colleagues, including Gene Hackman’s Avery Tolar and Hal Holbrook’s Oliver Lambert, aren’t exactly on the up and up. It’s an irresistible premise, emerging from a bona fide page-turner, that’s employed to watchable yet somewhat underwhelming effect by filmmaker Sydney Pollack, as the director, working from a script by David Rabe, Robert Towne, and David Rayfiel, generally proves unable to capture the propulsive, engrossing atmosphere contained within the source material – with the movie’s fairly absurd runtime of 154 minutes, for the most part, preventing the viewer from wholeheartedly connecting to the central character’s increasingly perilous plight. And yet it’s hard to deny that The Firm effectively holds one’s attention throughout, as Pollack’s steady directorial hand is heightened by a number of palpably above-average periphery elements – with the most obvious example of this the stellar performances by an impressively stacked roster of players. Cruise’s almost note-perfect work as the charismatic yet sympathetic protagonist is matched by a uniformly strong supporting cast, with, especially, Wilford Brimley’s sinister turn as the firm’s ruthless head of security standing as an ongoing highlight within the deliberately-paced proceedings. The movie’s third-act shift into full-on action territory is certainly a welcome one, and it’s ultimately clear that The Firm, though entertaining from start to finish, could (and should) have been trimmed down to a more manageable running time – with the end result a completely passable adaptation that never quite becomes the classic legal thriller it wants to be.

*** out of ****