THE FIRM
(Spoilers)
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A very good cast tells the story of a
young lawyer who gets a job offer that seems too good to be
true. Then he finds out the catch. THE FIRM is long and
complex, but polished and intriguing. Rating: high +1 (-4 to
+4). (Extended spoiler follows review.)
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.
Mark R. Leeper
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