Mitchell Y. McDeere (Tom Cruise) has just graduated in the top five of his class from Harvard Law School. With a record like his, there are understandably a lot of people interested in employing him. Offers abound from the large, the prestigious, and the desirable, but eventually it's a small firm from Memphis that snares Mitch's services. Bendini, Lambert, and Locke make the terms of his joining them so enticing that the deal is impossible to turn down--a starting salary near $100,000, a low-interest mortgage so he can buy a house, free use of a Mercedes, and repayment of his college loans. At first, Mitch and his wife Abby (Jeanne Tripplehorn) eagerly celebrate their new life and home, but it doesn't take long for the euphoria to wear thin. Two members of the Firm die under suspicious circumstances and soon Mitch begins to wonder what secrets lie behind the locked doors of Bendini, Lambert, and Locke.
John Grisham's novel THE FIRM is a furious page-turner, the kind of book that you don't want to put down once you've started reading it. The characters are well-rounded and developed in such a way that the reader cares about their fates. The fascinating setup (roughly the first 100 pages) is perhaps the novel's greatest strength and, even though the eventual resolution lacks punch, few would deny that THE FIRM is an entertaining read.
Sydney Pollack's film THE FIRM is the kind of movie that almost anyone could walk out on without feeling that they've missed much, regardless of whether they've read the book or not. Very little of what made the written version so enjoyable has made it 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 that, at best, can be described as average.
The producer/director has been quoted as saying that he wants his movie to stand on its own, apart from the book. That's a good idea, because the film THE FIRM doesn't come close to reaching the level of intensity achieved by the novel of the same name. Comparisons are inevitable, of course, but it isn't necessary to have read the written version to be disappointed by the visual adaptation.
The plot is a good place to start the discussion. This was the book's weakest element and, if anything, it's worse in the movie. While the final "twist" to the movie's story (which in no way resembles what happens in the novel) is clever, it is also difficult to accept. Let's not forget the forces that Mitch is up against. Is it reasonable to believe everything that happens in the pivotal climactic scenes? I doubt it. While I applaud the screenwriters for coming up with a unique way to conclude the film, their inept execution of the concept causes the ending to seem cheap and contrived.
The unfortunate tone of the movie is set during the first hour. The film spends quite a bit of time using short, often-disjointed scenes in an attempt to recapture the near-perfect mood of Grisham's setup. This would have worked nicely if those various snippets had successfully conveyed the allure of the Firm to Mitch and Abby, but things rush by so quickly and everything is so out-of-sync that the result is to make the first quarter of the movie long and tedious.
There are many differences between motion picture and novel. With numerous expected, mostly-minor cuts and changes, the first half of the film stays reasonably close to its written counterpart. After that, however, the differences become progressively larger until only the names of the characters and certain general events remain the same. Not all of the changes are bad--some, at least in their intent, are intriguing. Unfortunately, the script writers appear not to have thought things through all the way--a fault that Grisham's novel is rarely guilty of.
On the surface, Tom Cruise and Jeanne Tripplehorn might seem like acceptable choices to play the roles of Mitch and Abby McDeere. That is, until they start to "act". Cruise has at times been good in front of the camera (in pictures such as BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY), while in other instances he has done little more than show off his good looks (DAYS OF THUNDER). In the case of THE FIRM, which demands range and ability, the star falls solidly in the second category. Not until the last act does he give anything resembling a feeling performance, managing to effectively sabotage Mitch in the process. By the time things get interesting in THE FIRM, we don't care what happens to the protagonist, because the actor playing him has failed to capture our sympathy.
Jeanne Tripplehorn is worse, playing Abby with as much enthusiasm and energy as a zombie. Even as I was apathetic towards Mitch because of Cruise, I began to actively dislike Abby as a result of Tripplehorn's unimaginative performance. Consider for a moment someone of Emma Thompson's caliber in this part and you'll want to break into tears of frustration.
Fortunately for the film, the supporting cast is uniformly strong. Especially worthy of mention are Ed Harris as FBI agent Tarrance and Wilford Brimley as De Vasher, the Firm's security strong man. Both of these actors steal many of the scenes that they're in.
As impressive as these two, if not more so, is Gene Hackman's Avery Tolar. Softened in the movie from his counterpart in the book, this Avery becomes the only completely real--and sympathetic--character in the film. Hackman's performance is more than half the reason why. In the hands of a lesser actor, Avery could have become sappy, silly, or stupid, but not in this case. By the closing scenes of THE FIRM, he was the only one I really cared about.
I dislike bashing movies simply because they differ from the books that spawned them. The mediums of entertainment are different, after all, and should be treated as such. No film can do a perfect adaptation of a novel. In the case of THE FIRM, however, the problems have little to do with the changes made to the story. Putting aside the issue of its source, this is not a good movie. If there's a reason to go, and I don't think there is, it's to see Gene Hackman's performance. Unfortunately, given his amount of screen time, there's a lot of other garbage that will have to be endured along the way.
In the past, I've enjoyed many of Syndey Pollack's projects (OUT OF AFRICA and TOOTSIE in particular), but this film got derailed early and even this talented director proved unable to get it back on course. I suppose it's a difficult task to try to please both admirers of the novel and the casual movie-goer who has never read it. In attempting that, Pollack has made a mess of everything--plot, characterization, and pacing. Even the music, by Dave Grusin, is inappropriate.
Fans of John Grisham's novel will see THE FIRM regardless of what reviews it gets, so to them, and to others, I offer a cautionary warning to be wary. THE FIRM had a lot of potential but the production team found numerous ways to mess it up. This isn't an awful film, nor is it unwatchable, but I'd think twice before spending time and money in a darkened theater with telling of Mitch McDeere's struggles.
By : James Berardinelli
Source: rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating: 3
When I was in the Galapagos I was on a boat of about a hundred people and I was reading the newly published HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. I noticed that about four other people were reading the same novel at the same time. Out of a population of a hundred people that is a surprisingly high percentage of people reading the same novel. That sort of popularity rarely happens unless there is a film imminent. (I saw a lot of people reading JURASSIC PARK just before the film came out, but that film had a lot of hype.) The only other book I remember seeing that so many people seemed to be reading at once was John Grisham's novel FIRM. Now nuclear-powered submarines and Cold War warfare is a subject with natural appeal, but the story of a yuppie lawyer and a law firm does not have the same trappings to entice people so I guessed it must be a pretty good thriller. Now THE FIRM, like THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, has made it to the screen.
There is an old rule of business that a deal that sounds too good to be true probably is. That is what young lawyer Mitch McDeere (played by Tom Cruise) and his wife Abby (played by Jeanne Tripplehorn) discover when Mitch is choosing a firm for employment. One company in Memphis offers Mitch a package that sounds too sweet to turn down. His salary will be 20% higher than the next best offer, and he gets a beautiful home and a free Mercedes. The company just force-feeds Mitch one Perquisite after another. Bendini, Lambert, and Locke is just one big family, Mitch is told, but Abby balks when she sees how strongly the firm wants to run both Mitch's life and her own. And there have been some mysterious deaths of young lawyers at the new company. Then there are two mysterious strangers who are not with the firm but seem to know a little too much about the company and about Mitch. And, like the law firm, they too seem to have targeted Matich for something unknown to him. Mitch is a clever lawyer but he will need all his skill just to stay alive when he is caught between his own unscrupulous law firm and the government.
What made people want to read the book is the question, "What is *really* going on?" The same question will probably intrigue movie audiences, but the answer is disappointingly prosaic. In the book the answer makes some sense, but there were major revisions in the film and it does not make quite as much sense. (More on this in a heavy spoiler at the end of the review. Don't worry; I will flag it.)
This is a long film--more than two and a half hours long--and it feels like a long film, mostly because it is tightly packed with a lot happening throughout. But it is still a carefully crafted thriller. Much of the cost of the production had to be in the casting. This film has a powerhouse cast. Cruise is, of course, box-office gold and just recently played a lawyer in A FEW GOOD MEN. His skills are improving with time until he is a respectable actor now, though his range is limited. Tripplehorn also gets some chance to take part in the action and is adequate. But the two leads are not the most interesting casting. For members if the sinister law firm, David Rubin cast people who have generally played gentle, nice-guy roles, people of some integrity, the sort of actors who are chosen to do voice- overs for commercials. We have Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook, and Wilford Brimley--people you naturally feel are friendly. It makes them seem all the more sinister when their real natures are covered with this air of pleasant control. Then you have the grungies, the people who have less gentility and who cannot get away with it when they break the law. Here we have Gary Busey and a character actor I have been pointing out for years, David Strathairn. And cast against type is Holly Hunter, playing a gum-chewing tartish secretary. Playing government agents are Ed Harris (who plays straight arrows occasionally with sinister sides, as he did in UNDER FIRE), and Stephen Hill (who headed the IMF in the first season of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE).
THE FIRM is a thriller that does not cover tremendously new territory, nor does it have a lot of substance, but it is well made and exciting. And its thrills come from human interactions, not from explosions or martial arts or car chases. I give it a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER First, I cannot claim actually to have read the book. This comment is based on a three-hour abridgement on audio tape. But in the book, the reason the firm could make such generous offers was that it actually was the Mafia. They desperately needed the best lawyers they could get and were willing to spend whatever it took to get them. When Mitch decided to betray the firm, he was going head-to-head with the Mafia. It seems to me that the novel glosses over the question of how you can be a Mafia lawyer without realizing that your clients are all in the syndicate, but perhaps that is possible.
In the film, Bendini, Lambert, and Locke is not the Mafia, though it does work for them. This introduces a logical problem. There is nothing intrinsically against the law about being the legal counsel for the Mafia. In fact, the Constitution guarantees even the Mafia the right to legal counsel. So then what really is the nature of Bendini, Lambert, and Locke's villainy in the film> They try to control their staff's lives to the point of killing them when they want to leave. And they overbill by about 25% in the example we see. Both actions probably help the bottom line. And they probably do some illegal work for their clients. But none of this seems profitable enough to explain their very bizarre way of doing business. By making Bendini, Lambert, and Locke the villain rather than the Mafia, there is more that is left unexplained.
