Mitch McDeere (Tom Cruise) is a young hot shot Harvard law graduate. Everybody is vying for him, but a small Memphis makes him an offer he couldn't refuse. His wife Abby (Jeanne Tripplehorn) is suspicious but Mitch comes from a poor family and is seduced by the money. Soon, he finds troubling evidence that his firm is corrupt, and some of their lawyers are dying in suspicious circumstances.

It's a tight little thriller based on a John Grisham novel. Tom Cruise is perfect as the young go getter. There are great acting talents in Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook, Wilford Brimley, and Ed Harris. On the other hand, Holly Hunter isn't wild enough in her role.

Everything is going great. The last third is a bit too sloppy. Sydney Pollack isn't the greatest action director. The chases and the guns aren't good enough. For a third act, there is a lot of exposition. When it should be exploding, the movie is giving us an exam.

Tom Cruise has the look of a young hot-shot lawyer so he fills the Bill as a new graduate who is sought after by some of the biggest firms in the country. He ends up joining a small but very successful firm. He does this because he feels this is a path to great success in the future. When a couple young lawyers are killed, it leads to the discovery that something is amiss. Soon Cruise gets in the middle of two forces, either of which could destroy his career. One is the FBI and the other is the firm itself. The key to this is how he can separate himself from the firm without disastrous results. John Grisham is a master storyteller and his books really translate well into films. This is no exception. There are times when I really find Cruise annoying, but mostly I think he is quite a good actor.

The Firm (1993)

The twist in the plot as you realize this Memphis law firm is not what it seems, and the rather innocent freshman lawyer played by Tom Cruise is slow to catch on, is the core of the movie, and a relief. It starts steadily, or slowly, depending on your patience, and in fact plays many scenes out in more detail than we need for a kind of bookish thriller. It's not a bad ride, and there are some further, minor twists, but it's not packed tightly enough, or frankly original enough, to lift its boots out of the sand.

Director Sydney Pollack, hugely successful as a director and actor, might have just had bad scriptwriting here by David Rabe, because John Grisham's book had proved itself. The acting is really solid (I'm no Cruise fan, but he's fine),but the characters are often doing things that just don't quite follow, or that are improbable or stupid. Or they end up doing something dangerous and the danger is either watered down or ridiculous. Examples that come to mind are how they show Cruise discovering or stealing or xeroxing files. We get the plot, but it lumbers along, or is just shown, not built up with suspense. The cinematographer takes a hit here, I think. Things are often nicely framed and routinely well done, but a thriller needs to hide some things, show some things, create ambiance and mystery, and so on, visually. It doesn't really happen.

So, for a kind of technical high-stakes, rich person's good-guy bad-guy suspense film, it will get you through, but barely. By the last five minutes, if you aren't sucked in, you'll want to scream "hurry up!"