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The Firm (1993)
Rate:
6
Viewed:
11/03, 9/21, 5/23
9/21:
The first best-selling book John Grisham wrote is The Firm which resulted in a movie.
It comes with a big budget and a cast of well-known thespians giving somewhat superficial performances.
Having read the book before,
the ending is completely different in the movie and therefore sucks. Mitch McDeere decides to work for the Mafia because it's
important that they're being correctly billed. Yeah...right.
Tom Cruise begins to be in a constant state of shock after finding out the truth for the first time and maintains it throughout. At
the outset, the firm should've realized that something's off with his character and acted accordingly. That being said, he's the
wrong guy for the role; a stronger actor will have done the part justice by using appropriate emotions for different situations.
Jeanne Tripplehorn is no better, showing zero chemistry with Tom Cruise. Gene Hackman is ordinary but moves things along. Ed
Harris is extremely bald. For making photocopies, wearing a distracting orange wig, and doing nothing much else, Holly Hunter
strangely received an Academy Award nomination but won it away for The Piano during the same year.
Clocking at two hours and thirty-four minutes, the movie is too long while the script is a mix of okay and terrible. About
an hour is spent on trivial stuff. At one point, Jeanne Tripplehorn escapes the house, and in five seconds, Tom Cruise
starts running like a madman after her as if he's in a 100-meter Olympic race. While this is going on, Jeanne's head start is
certainly unbelievable.
All in all, John Grisham's The Firm was mostly filmmable to begin with, but Hollywood decided to change a lot of
it and, as a result, made everything worse.
5/23:
For The Firm, I reread the book and decided to watch the film again to see how it compared.
I wasn't impressed with the former, and it was just lackluster. On the surface, the latter seems to be
well-made, having the hallmarks of a first-rate Hollywood production. Yet after spending so much time going through
the plot, the last twenty minutes leaves me cheated, leading to the conclusion that it's been workmanlike
the whole time which is evident through Tom Cruise's eyes toward the end.
The Firm has one of the worst endings ever. Mitch McDeere did all of the work, so he could become a mob lawyer? Uh,
that wasn't in the book. The explanation (overbilling!?!) doesn't make sense, either. It seems like the writers left many
concepts intact during the first half of the book but threw out the second half by coming up with stupid crap.
The cast is fine; they're whom I imagined the characters to be but with some differences. It's hard for me to believe
that Ed Harris agreed to do a small part in a supporting role; he's better than that. Jeanne Tripplehorn comes off weak as
Mitch's wife. The most ridiculous is Holly Hunter receiving an Oscar nomination for nothing much; it should've gone to
somebody else more deserving. Equally so is Tom Cruise running hard plenty of times when he's, an overworked rookie
lawyer, supposed to be in bad shape.
Notice the actor who played Sonny Capps. His name was Jerry Weintruab who's an important influence in the history
of music. While starting out in the business, he discovered John Denver and thus managed his career. Later, he would be the first to conceive a
national tour in arenas which led to Elvis Presley making a comeback during the 70's. The same was done for Frank Sinatra.
All studios turned down Robert Altman's proposal to produce Nashville until Jerry came along with his money,
and the rest was history.
All in all, two hours and thirty-four minutes is too long for The Firm that's armed with a bad ending.