Firm, The (1993)

reviewed by
Steve Rhodes

                                 THE FIRM
                       A film review by Steve Rhodes
                        Copyright 1996 Steve Rhodes

RATING (0 TO ****):  ** 1/2

         [This is one of my golden oldies reviews - written years 
          ago when I was just getting started and never posted. 
          I stand by the conclusions, but in most cases many details 
          are missing that I would normally include today.]

     I am a BIG John Grisham fan.  He is the author of THE FIRM.  I
liked him so much that I ended up reading all 4 of his books while on
vacation in Hawaii in May.

Now, I would give the firm 2 1/2 stars. Only if you have NOT read the book, would I recommend the movie; otherwise, I would say skip it.

I found the movie simple and easy to follow. I thought the casting was just about perfect in that everyone in the show reminded me of the characters from the book. Although granted there were some changes, I thought overall the movie was a good subset of the book. I thought the movie was well directed and edited. The visuals and the sound were nothing special but were okay.

Now, why if I loved the book and I thought this was very similar to the book would I give it only a so-so review? The reason the book was so great was the suspense and the page-turner writing style. After reading the book, there were no surprises. A big ho-hum.

If you have not read the book, you might just love this show. If I had not read the book, I think it might have gotten as high as 3 to 3 1/2 stars from me.

**** = One of the top few films of this or any year.  A must see film.
***  = Excellent show.  Look for it.
**   = Average movie.  Kind of enjoyable.
*    = Poor show.  Don't waste your money.
0    = One of the worst films of this or any year.  Totally unbearable.

REVIEW WRITTEN ON: July 23, 1993

Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews