The Firm (1993)

When paradise turns into nightmare

RELEASED IN 1993 and directed by Sydney Pollack based on John Grisham’s novel, "The Firm” is a crime drama/thriller starring Tom Cruise as a top Harvard grad lawyer who desperately wants to leave behind his working-class origins and takes a high-paying job at a firm in Memphis. He and his wife (Jeanne Tripplehorn) are ecstatic in their affluent new world until clues mount up that the firm has a sinister side. Gene Hackman plays his mentor at the firm while Ed Harris appears as an FBI agent. Holly Hunter, Hal Holbrook, David Strathairn and Gary Busey are also on hand.

This has long been one of my favorites from this genre. You really feel for McDeere (Cruise) & his wife as their utopia morphs into an inescapable hell. In the Washington DC scene you grasp how limited their choices are as they’re caught in a crossfire between the Mob and the FBI. McDeere must use his wits, his knowledge and “golden connections” for them to get out unscathed, if possible.

I always favored the piano score by Dave Grusin, which some have described as “bouncy.” While you could call it that, it has different tones depending on the sequence. For instance, during the closing city chase it’s driving and portentous. There’s also a melancholic component when suitable. The positive side of the piano score is that it makes the film timeless. Consider quality movies from that general era which were horribly dated by conventional scores, like “No Way Out” (1987).

THE FILM RUNS 2 hour, 34 minutes and was shot in Memphis, Tennessee; West Memphis, Arkansas; Cayman Islands; Washington DC; Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts.

GRADE: A/A-

**An excellent film, full of tension and suspense.**

In my country there is a popular adage that probably also has an equivalent in other countries and that says “there is no beauty without a flaw”, that is, if something is too good, it must be wrong. And despite the excellent education and academic evaluations, the lawyer of this film seems not to know this simple truth.

Based on a novel by John Grisham, the script follows Mitch, a young lawyer who has just been hired by a large and important law firm in Memphis, Tennessee. The job is irresistible: a high salary, several perks, a car and paid trips, everything a young yuppie and his wife could want. What he doesn't know is that his new bosses are heavily financed by mafia groups to whom they provide protection and legal advice, and that lawyers who seek to leave the firm end up mysteriously dying. When he finds out, he will have to decide what to do: either maintain his loyalty to the firm or collaborate with the FBI and frame his colleagues.

The film has an excellent suspense that works wonderfully, and keeps us hooked until the end. The direction, in charge of the excellent Sydney Pollak, is really good and there is a certain similarity between this film and “Eyes Wide Shut”, another intense suspense film in which Cruise and Pollak work together again. And I have no doubt that Alfred Hitchcock's masterwork also had its influence on the way Pollak conceived his film. The script has many twists and turns and may demand some attention from the audience, but I guarantee that this will not be a problem if the spectator allows himself to be involved and absorbed by the suspense and tension that are gradually imposed.

I'm not a fan of Cruise, but I recognize that he is a solid and sympathetic protagonist, making the character someone for whom we can have a certain empathy, oscillating between naivety and wit. There are a good handful of well done action scenes that the actor was more than cut out for. Gene Hackman, in turn, gives life to a mature, bohemian lawyer who seems to be more interested in traveling and swimming in the Caribbean than in working with his clients. However, he was also a sympathetic presence, and I really hoped that his character would get away with it somehow. Jeanne Tripplehorn doesn't seem to have much to do, and I thought, at first, that she would just be the protagonist's shy and fragile wife. However, the script gives us a twist that refocuses the character and gives her a much more active and intervening role than we could guess in the first half-hour length. One can also mention the good performances of Ed Harris, Steven Hill and Wilford Brimley, in roles that are tougher and closer to an action movie. Holly Hunter also appears here, but in such a minimal character that it seems inconceivable to me that she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

Technically, the film has many qualities that we can point out: the cinematography is good and gives us an elegant look and good colors, so that the film does not look as old and dull as other films of the same year. The settings are excellent, in particular the offices and the paradise hotel in the Cayman Islands, where some beautiful and very colorful underwater scenes were filmed. The film passes through Memphis, Washington and other places, always with a careful eye on the choice of filming locations and the best framing. We don't have a show of visual and special effects, but the little that is done works very well. What definitely deserves a mention is the excellent soundtrack, based massively on the piano, and which is really effective in the task of accentuating the environment, deepening the suspense and gradually making things more exciting.

Before he has even passed his bar exam, aspiring lawyer "Mitch" (Tom Cruise) is offered an hefty salary to take a job with a prestigious law firm headed up by "Lambert" (Hal Holbrook). Needless to say, he and wife "Abigail" (Jeanne Tripplehorn) are delighted with his new Mercedes and their new home, but is this simply too good to be true? Well shortly after he joins, two of his colleagues die in what appears to be a boating accident, then he is approached by the FBI and given some shocking news about his new employers and their involvement with the Chicago mob. Using something between the carrot and the stick, they and the Department of Justice (Ed Harris) invite "Mitch" to help them prove what they have hitherto been unable to establish. Naturally he is scared, but he keeps his head well enough to inform his bosses of this approach, though not of it's intention, and that is when "Avery" (Gene Hackman) takes a more intimate interest in the young man and his family affairs and warns him of the dangers of becoming trapped in the intricate web of slandering government chicanery - something the company's outwardly benign enforcer "Devasher" (Wilford Brimley) points out all too clearly. Now damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, "Mitch" has to take his wife into his confidence and then to try to play both sides off the other long enough for them to escape and still see the truth told. It's perhaps a bit long and some of the sub-plots do clutter up the main theme, but Cruise and the on-form Hackman - whose faux-trustworthy grin was always his most effective acting tool - work well together as the cat and mouse game gathers pace and the dynamics chop and change. There is also a bit of social commentary contained here too, as the ambitious young man is as much driven by a need to escape his humble roots as he is to prove himself a skillful advocate and the story also shines a little light on the murkier world of the corporate legals where money laundering, peddling and extortion can be easily hidden from those who don't what they ought to be looking for in the first place. For me, this is the beginning of the end of the Cruise purple patch; before he began to take more control of his own productions and lose much of his charm, and with a solid ensemble around both him and Hackman, this is a superior drama that doesn't quite follow the path you might have expected.