Movie Review: Tom Cruise faces danger at ‘The Firm’

Novelist John Grisham’s law thrillers have been rich resources for moviemakers, and “The Firm” is one of the most entertaining results to date.

The 1993 drama – which MGM+ Marquee presents Friday, Aug. 23 – runs a bit shy of three hours, but it’s to the credit of veteran director Sydney Pollack and his team that its pace rarely if ever flags, and it remains thoroughly watchable throughout. While Tom Cruise is the nominal star, he gets strong support from a top-notch cast, with some members getting roles that rank among their best.

Cruise plays earnest Mitch McDeere, the newest recruit to a Memphis firm that entices him with all sorts of perks, including a salary that stuns his schoolteacher wife Abby (Jeanne Tripplehorn). Soon after they relocate from Boston, the firm is hit with a tragedy involving two of its lawyers, launching McDeere’s suspicions that all is not right.

That hunch is advanced by an insistent FBI agent (Ed Harris) who intends to use McDeere as an informant, though the firm’s security chief (Wilford Brimley) is just as determined not to let the Feds get any such information from the newbie. A private detective (Gary Busey) and his secretary (Holly Hunter, who was an Oscar nominee for best supporting actress here, and won the best actress honor for “The Piano” the same year) also become involved in the situation.

Also registering very strongly is Gene Hackman as McDeere’s appointed mentor in the firm, the smugly self-assured Avery Tolar, who plays fast and loose with rules ... extending to his clear interest in Abby, something that offends her at first, but ultimately works in her favor when she eventually takes an active role in trying to extricate her husband and herself from the dangerous intrigue that has enveloped them. Put off a bit by Mitch’s wiser-than-his-years knowledge, Tolar says to him about being a supposed protege, “I’ve never had one. You ever been one?”