The Firm

The result is a top-drawer melodrama, a polished example of commercial movie-making that manages to improve on the original while retaining its best-selling spirit. [30 Jun 1993 Pg. F1]Read Full Review »

Cruise was born to play company man, and the role is an opportunity to sum up his old roles and transcend them with his most potently emotional work.Read Full Review »

No one is going to confuse The Firm with art, but its high- cholesterol virtues-a story that keeps you guessing, a dozen meaty character turns-are enough to send you home sated.Read Full Review »

But with a screenplay that developed the story more clearly, this might have been a superior movie, instead of just a good one with some fine performances.Read Full Review »

Yet the film's most serious flaw (next to a newly concocted fizz-out ending) is that it's not sinister enough. [30 Jun 1993 Pg. 01.D]Read Full Review »

Pollack makes a solid job of it, as does Cruise. But solid isn't enough when it comes to thrillers -- or courtroom dramas, for that matter. Solid is great when it comes to office furniture.Read Full Review »

The movie is extremely long (two hours and 34 minutes) and so slow that by the end you feel as if you've been standing up even if you've been sitting down.Read Full Review »

Tom Cruise heads a tony cast in a best-seller movie that is firm at the start and infirm by the end.Read Full Review »

Director Sydney Pollack zapped out a taut thriller in "Three Days of the Condor". But The Firm is mostly flab, in the manner of Pollack's elephantine Havana.Read Full Review »

Very little of what made the written version so enjoyable has been successfully translated to the screen, and what we're left with instead is an overly-long (two hours and thirty-four minutes, to be exact), pedantic thriller.Read Full Review »