The film has many familiar faces, led by Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman. Cruise's character is a lawyer, recently graduated from Harvard Law School and takes a job offer from a less than prestigious law firm promising him and gifting him with amazing things if he takes the job. He does. Cruise's character engages in a dramatic thrill ride when he finds himself in a undesirable situation.This thriller keeps you entertained from beginning to end, but there is a noticable drop in consistency about half way through. I think the film had an identity problem after the first hour and it finds itself and re-loses itself every few minutes after that. The movie is over 2 1/2 hours long and I think the speed of the film should have been faster than it was, maybe they could have shrunk the film to make it better, cutting out all the unnecessary moments.
The acting is actually surprisingly good from everyone in the film. Tom Cruise makes you more interested and sure of his ability as an actor in this film than most of his more recent work but still has the very similar type of character as he plays in most of his films. Gene Hackman on the other hand just elevates the film when he is in the scene. Gene Hackman has failed less at making me interested in any of his characters less than almost anyone else in Hollywood. Gene Hackman proves again that a legendary actor can play any size role, in any shape of a role, and makes the whole project that much better. This is why those legends cost so much to be filmed. The problem comes when those legends sell themselves out, using their past glory to pull in current paychecks, and we all have examples in mind.
The camera work in this film is as plain and average as it gets. There wasn't a single seen I thought was interesting for the film. The story, as I have not read the book by John Grisham, appears to be a decent one told decently. Decent stories can be made into great films given the right directors but directors show their colors when they misuse or don't produce what could have been made from the story given to them. Sidney Pollack as this film's director just makes the near endless list of directors that are capable of satisfying their audience, but never amazing them.
Sidney Pollack's best work was in Michael Clayton, a George Clooney carried film. In 'The Firm' you can see the attempt by the director to make something epic, but it misses. In almost all his films which I have seen, they all appear to have the same cover, trying to appear good on the outside so people will buy it, but when they do, they realize quality isn't as high as it may have appeared. I think if he tried a little less, normally a fail method, would serve him better. But I will say, there isn't another director that comes to mind, which tries to make epic films out of non-epic stories, and if he couldn't manage to get all the big time actors in his films to carry them, he wouldn't have had a job for very long.
This ride was fun, regardless of all the slander I have given it. The only regret I have with watching it would be the place it was on the order on my list of "to see movies", I would have dropped it closer to the bottom. For anyoen considering to watch this film, I would tell them there are better and more influential films to see before you see this, guaranteed.
"The Firm"
6/10
6/10
