The Firm

Sydney Pollack has some good work on his C.V. ranging from They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (1969) to Tootsie (1982) but his best work was well behind him when he turned in this by-numbers adaptation of a John Grisham novel. 

Tom Cruise plays a hot-shot young Harvard Law School graduate Mitch McDeere who gets head-hunted by a “small” Memphis legal firm (henceforth referred to as “The Firm”). He and his wife Abby (Jeanne Tripplehorne) quit their humble home in Boston and head South. Although they are initially swept away by the trappings of success, with Mitch working until all hours the gloss soon begins to wear off for Abby a primary school teacher. Mitch, however, is locked into the machismo culture and a mortal fear of poverty, Then two members of the firm die under suspicious circumstances and soon Mitch begins to wonder what is going on.

I’ve never read a John Grisham novel which you’d think given their huge popularlity would be ripe for adaptation to the big screen. But they have defeated not only Pollack but both Alan J. Pakula with The Pelican Brief (1993) and Francis Coppola with The Rainmaker (1997) so it would seem not to be the case.

The story’s “all that glisters is not gold” moral is established early in the piece but the mechanics  of literally (albeit unnecessarily) demonstrating it devolves upon a plot which is largely ludicrous (but still obvious), turning The Firm, which when we encountered it was full of squeaky clean suits, into a veritable Empire of Evil with Mitch on what we know will be a crusade of justice seen to be done and personal redemption.

Cruise had played a hot-shot lawyer to better effect in his previous film A Few Good Men (1992). There he rose to the occasion but here the screenplay by David Rabe, Robert Towne, and David Rayfiel gives him gives him nothing to do but dutifully satisfy the requirements of the plot. Ditto for Jeanne Tripplehorne who although the same age (thirty) looks old enough to be Mitch’s mother and acts like it.

The film’s only real substance is provided by the always-rewarding Gene Hackman who both as an actor and a character stands out against a background of blandness. Ed Harris with a shaven head catches our attention whilst it is good to see Wilford Brimley do something other than his stock-in-trade “Gramps” stereotype. These positives, however are offset by Dave Grusin's tinkling score and the wardrobe department's fixation with wide-shouldered suits and voluminous raincoats

But that is about all one can say for this film which is remarkable only as an anomaly in the career of one of the preeminent directors of his generation.

 

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