The Firm
Overview
Before legal thrillers were a TV genre unto themselves, there was this. Tom Cruise plays Mitch McDeere, a Harvard Law star from nothing who gets courted by every firm in America and picks a small Memphis outfit offering a house, a Mercedes, and a salary that should have been his first warning. The firm is perfect — too perfect. His mentor Avery Tolar (Gene Hackman, all charm and rot) shows him the ropes, his wife Abby (Jeanne Tripplehorn) starts noticing the cracks, and then young associates begin dying in accidents. The FBI arrives with the truth: the firm launders money for the Chicago mob, and nobody ever leaves it alive. Sydney Pollack directs from John Grisham's bestseller with a veteran's patience, letting the paranoia build scene by scene instead of rushing to the chases. Hackman is superb, Holly Hunter steals her few minutes as a secretary with a plan (and got an Oscar nomination for it), and Cruise does the thing he does best — a golden boy realizing the trap has already closed. Pure nineties comfort-thriller.
