“If I had to label myself in some way, I would describe myself as a kind of traditionalist, I suppose, in terms of cinema. Clearly, I’m a victim of the films I saw as a child — which were not so much art films as pop entertainment. I’ve never been a chic director in the sense of art movies, if you will, or an auteur type of director — an innovative director like an Altman, or someone who’s more responsive to the totality, like Francis Coppola. My work is generally in the middle area of popular entertainment — large-budget commercial Hollywood films with stars, which were essentially the kinds of films I saw when I was a kid.”
–Sydney Pollack, from Judith Crist’s Take 22: Moviemakers on Moviemaking (1984)
I was 17 when The Firm came out in the summer of 1993. My girlfriend wanted to see it because she was a Tom Cruise fan and had read the John Grisham novel. I had neither of those things going for me, but I figured director Sydney Pollack’s adaptation might be somewhat entertaining. I was wrong. The Firm was enormously entertaining.
First of all, there’s the cast — sturdy, reliable veterans like Gene Hackman and Hal Holbrook, applying just the right mix of paternal guidance and intimidation to Cruise’s character; Holly Hunter, Ed Harris, and David Strathairn giving funny, memorable supporting performances; Wilford Brimley as a heavy, which is perfect casting in my opinion since the “World’s Scariest Grandpa” coffee mug was made for guys like him; and Gary Busey in a caffeinated five-minute cameo that takes full advantage of his offbeat talent. Pollack plays to his actors’ strengths, even bringing out the best in Cruise by hammering home his character’s no-way-out dilemma. The Firm also boasts a crackerjack score by Dave Grusin, a longtime Pollack collaborator (Three Days of the Condor, Tootsie, Random Hearts), that uses only one instrument — the piano — a rarity in big-budget Hollywood films. Though The Firm is a little too long at two and a half hours (Pollack said in 1995 that he wished he’d had more time to edit it before it was released), the energy of the performances, the music, and Fredric and William Steinkamp’s editing, as well as the changes that Pollack and the film’s writers — David Rabe, Robert Towne, and David Rayfiel — made to Grisham’s story to condense it for the big screen, add up to a terrific suspense thriller.
