The Firm

The result is a top-drawer melodrama, a polished example of commercial movie-making that manages to improve on the original while retaining its best-selling spirit. [30 Jun 1993 Pg. F1]

This is a professional machine of a movie that compresses huge amounts of information into its two and a half hours of screen time. But it's so weighed down by detail, it fails to generate any real suspense.

But with a screenplay that developed the story more clearly, this might have been a superior movie, instead of just a good one with some fine performances.

An average movie improved by Cruise's star appeal and accomplished supporting cast.

By the film's climax, following the plot movements has become merely complex rather than suspenseful.

By then, the lofty ambitions can't disguise the sad reality - it's long, it's cluttered, and it's trite.

Very little of what made the written version so enjoyable has been successfully translated to the screen, and what we're left with instead is an overly-long (two hours and thirty-four minutes, to be exact), pedantic thriller.

Nicely plotted film with high intensity and a tremendous script. Acting was superb. The film makes it so there's no way out. Minor Spoiler******* and Tom cruise gets out.

Tom Cruise plays a hotshot lawyer, fresh out of school, who takes a tantalizing job offer in Memphis and discovers it's more than he bargained for. Soon he's on the run from both the law and his former bosses, trying to serve justice without sacrificing his young career along the way. It's serviceable, but has some issues. Most of the plot revolves around various cast members making poor decisions under pressure, which is puzzling since they share a profession that demands cool heads. The big-spending highs never seem all that high, perhaps a symptom of the movie's age (the cushy home Cruise is provided by his new employers is furnished to look like your Grandma's crib), and the chief threats can be hard to take seriously because they always seem so bumbling and aloof. The firm's muscle, led by a rotund, elderly Wilford Brimley (with a quick appearance from Breaking Bad's Dean Norris), is a comedy of errors and the pursuing FBI squad, likewise, can't get out of its own way. The Firm has twists and turns, standard for a Grisham adaptation, but they aren't always set up properly and don't make a ton of sense. Usually you'd expect some great oration from this kind of place setting, but the monologues are kept short and underwhelming in favor of a series of frantic chase scenes and tense near-misses. A touch on the bland side, it's not as bad as my complaints might let on but also not as good as some of the author's better-known works.

I am a huge John Grisham fan, but I never cared much for The Firm. I finally decided to watch it as part of a paper for my film class, because as the first adaptation **** novel, it was important to the paper, but I still can't explain why it was the first novel they decided to turn into a movie. The story follows a younger lawyer who is graduating at the top of his Harvard Law class. As the offers pour in, he has a tough decision to make, and finally settles on a small Nashville firm, that has made him an offer that is too good to be true. As he starts working for The Firm, Mitch McDeere (Tom Cruise) comes to realize that their only client is an organized crime syndicate and he's trapped inside. Eventually, the FBI comes to McDeere and tries to recruit him as a whistle blower, and his response is somewhat unorthodox. What I never understood about this story is why McDeere went to the lengths he did. He could have achieved the same outcome by simply complying with one side or the other. He jumps through all these hoops and does all these secretive things in order to achieve the same outcome. To me, this always made the second half of the book and film to be pretty much pointless. Tom Cruise stars and shines in the type of role that defined his early career. At this point in his career, if Tom Cruise is not starring as a dark loner or a sci-fi action hero, there isn't any point to watching his movies, but back in the early 90s he really had that special spark that has garnered him the reputation he has today. Cruise was paired with Gene Hackman, making the perfect dynamic of the old star, turning things over to the new. It was a bold move that didn't work out so well for the Indiana Jones franchise, but here it was one of the most interesting things about this film. The acting is terrific and a Grisham film is always very clever and well written, but as I said I've never been a fan of The Firm. The second half of the story just doesn't sit right with me and I'll continue to say it no matter how good the cast is.

Almost everything about this film is capable while doing its best to be absolutely unremarkable. Two and a half hours of boring intrigue with no stakes being conveyed as worth my interest at any point. Are we supposed to LIKE any of the characters, or care that they're at risk? Everyone involved are just so stilted and insufferable, and what actually is that soundtrack? It's like they scored a chain barbecue restaurant commercial but then realized they were actually doing a a thriller score and changed nothing. There are better things you can do with your time than watch this. I'm no Grisham fan so maybe everything was lost on me.

This movie feels unfinished. The beginning is fantastic and catches you by the hook. But just as it's about to reach its climax, it decides to send you on a 20 minute chase scene through Memphis tourist attractions that have little to do with the actual story. The set pieces involved must have gone overbudget, because the finale is retconned to reuse old sets, and it doesn't make a lick of sense. When will writers learn that the ending matters?