The Firm (1993) dir. Sydney Pollack
“It’s not sexy, but it’s got teeth!”
While the 21st century has seen its share of legal thrillers with 2023’s Academy Award winning Anatomy of a Fall, 2007’s Michael Clayton, and 2019’s criminally underseen Dark Waters it was in the 1990’s where legal thrillers made their mark on the industry as easily digested and highly agreeable works with moody lighting and star-studded casts. A Few Good Men, The Pelican Brief, Primal Fear, and The Verdict all went on to massive success and defined the zeitgeist of the early 21st century.
If the 90’s was the time of the legal thriller so too was it the time of John Grisham, the lawyer and politician turned author who is still churning out bestsellers over thirty years after his first published work. Film adaptations of Grisham’s work are the archetypes of the legal thriller. A lawyer who wants to do right by their client and is fighting an unjust system summarises at least half a dozen of these films however, this cookie-cutter format should not deter the new viewer. Everyone knows “You can’t handle the truth!”, most kids would be able to say that to you in a cadence mimicking Nicholson’s outburst with no knowledge of where it originated, fewer, I’d be surprised if any, could quote a line from Sydney Pollack’s 1993 Grisham adaptation, The Firm.
Tom Cruise stars as recent Harvard graduate, Mitch McDeere, who accepts a lucrative offer to work for a southern law firm and unwittingly enters a world of deception, murder and white collar crime. Cruise’s McDeere is peak 90’s hero with a wide-eyed positive view of the world that quickly vanishes before the half way point is reached. Luring Cruise deeper into the heart of darkness is Gene Hackman coming off his Oscar winning role in Clint Eastwood’s 1992 opus with another performance for the ages. Hackman is sinister and vile and helps to bring Cruise down to a level of griminess in performance he hadn’t yet reached. Remaining true to the star-studding of legal thrillers, The Firm is packed with stars and some of the best character actors of all time. Hal Holbrook, Wilford Brimley, Ed Harris, Holly Hunter, David Strathairn, Gary Busey, Tobin Bell, I could keep going but this review would be half list.
Behind the camera Sydney Pollack provides a serviceable utilitarian direction with some extravagant 90’s cinematography. The hand of an experienced film maker is clear in the compositions and the certainty with which it approaches some editing choices. The Firm doesn’t reach the heights of Pollack’s late sixties/early seventies fares such as The Swimmer, They Shoot Horses Don’t They or Three Days of the Condor. Making sure that 90’s lighting hits just right is Australian cinematographer John Seale who I believe is a real unsung hero of the medium. He’s worked with the likes of George Miller, Peter Weir and Anthony Minghella to name a few and his style is instantly recognisable.
Penning the screenplay is Robert Towne who passed away on the first of July this year. Towne, quite frankly, is one of the best screenwriters of all time and a hero of the New Hollywood movement. He was one of the most prolific ‘script doctors’ in the industry working on an enormous array of indisputable classics in all genres including 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde which is largely considered to have begun the New Hollywood revolution all the way to the first two Mission Impossible movies. Towne’s screenplay for Chinatown, one of the only ones he wrote in entirety, is widely considered to be one of, if not the best screenplay of all time. His work on The Firm is exceptional, crafting a multi-layered plot with long stretches of snappy dialogue that would make Mamet shudder.
The Firm is a load of fun. It’s got one of the most incredible uses of Chekhov’s gun ever and a terrific piano-heavy score by Dave Grusin. It’s intense yet light and in the end you will walk away either wanting to study law or steer as far away as possible.