Mitch McDeere is a young man with a promising future in Law. About to sit his Bar exam he is approached by The Firm and made an offer he doesnt refuse. Seduced by the money and gifts showered on him he is totally oblivious to the more sinister side of his company. Then two Associates are murdered. The FBI contact him asking him for information and suddenly his life is ruined. He has a choice - work with the FBI or stay with the Firm. Either way he will lose his life as he knows it. Mitch figures the only way out is to follow his own plan...
Review
The Firm (1993)
The twist in the plot as you realize this Memphis law firm is not what it seems and the rather innocent freshman lawyer played by Tom Cruise is slow to catch on is the core of the movie and a relief. It starts steadily or slowly depending on your patience and in fact plays many scenes out in more detail than we need for a kind of bookish thriller. It's not a bad ride and there are some further minor twists but it's not packed tightly enough or frankly original enough to lift its boots out of the sand.
Director Sydney Pollack hugely successful as a director and actor might have just had bad scriptwriting here by David Rabe because John Grisham's book had proved itself. The acting is really solid (I'm no Cruise fan but he's fine) but the characters are often doing things that just don't quite follow or that are improbable or stupid. Or they end up doing something dangerous and the danger is either watered down or ridiculous. Examples that come to mind are how they show Cruise discovering or stealing or xeroxing files. We get the plot but it lumbers along or is just shown not built up with suspense. The cinematographer takes a hit here I think. Things are often nicely framed and routinely well done but a thriller needs to hide some things show some things create ambiance and mystery and so on visually. It doesn't really happen.
So for a kind of technical highstakes rich person's goodguy badguy suspense film it will get you through but barely. By the last five minutes if you aren't sucked in you'll want to scream "hurry up!"