Tue 6 Jan 2015
THE FIRM. Paramount Pictures, 1993. Tom Cruise, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook, Terry Kinney, Wilford Brimley, Ed Harris, Holly Hunter, David Strathairn, Gary Busey, Steven Hill. Based on the novel by John Grisham. Director: Stanley Pollack.
The Firm takes stabs at evoking a fairly interesting dichotomy between the monied privileged college-degreed Haves vs. the working-stiff Secretaries, Truck Drivers, Small-Time Operators and other Have-Nots, but director Sidney Pollack soft-pedals this, lest he offend the upwardly mobile types the film (and the book it rode in on) is marketed toward.
After his promising early efforts, like the beguiling, pretentious Castle Keep or the fitfully elegiac Jeremiah Johnson, I’m disappointed to see Pollack work so hard at being slickly professional, but he does accomplish one pleasantly quirky effect: The whole theater cheered when lovable, crusty old Wilfred Brimley got the tar beat out of him. And I never thought I’d see that in a Movie.
January 6th, 2015 at 5:42 pm
This did well, but had about as much suspense as a mayo sandwich. I didn’t like the vanilla badly written book and this film was a waste of time other than Brimley’s fate.
By that time I was hoping Cruise would meet the same fate.
Pollack’s skills may have been professional, but his result was strictly amateur night at the suspense movie.
I barely managed to make it to the predictable ending.