Review of The Firm, directed by Sydney Pollack

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I feel like a lot of my blog introductions, especially when it comes to movies, have been lamenting on the fact I don’t have a ton of time lately. I used to work as a film critic (which, in fact, was so incredibly underpaid that I now make more off of this blog’s display ads than I ever did publishing anywhere else), and then when I was in graduate school I was writing a lot about film, so I used to watch so many movies.

But now I work an 8-5, come home, and then doom scroll my evenings away instead of watching the movies I used to love so dearly. And recently I realized I want to stop doing that, so I’ve set limits on my phone and am fully prepared to sit back and watch more movies and read more books in order to feed my brain.

I elevated this game by acquiring a Criterion subscription a few months back. Before getting my job I was a lot more tight with my money, and although I could technically afford the Criterion subscription, I put it into investments instead. But now I’m investing in my brain more along with my longterm retirement, which is a great feeling.

That’s how I ended up watching The Firm on a work night. Instead of doom scrolling, I’ve been spending my evenings watching movies. It’s quite nice.

Let’s get into the review!

Accepting a job at a prestigious law firm changes one man’s life, sucking him into the dark side of the industry.

Our main character in this movie is Mitch, who just graduated from Harvard Law School and has a shiny idea of what the industry is going to be like with him in it. He accepts a pretty good job offer at a law firm in Tennessee, then packs up everything his wife and he own in order to move down south. But first: he has to pass the bar exam in Tennessee.

In the meantime, he meets Avery, a senior partner, who gives him a lay of the land on what it’s like working at this firm. There’s a lot of strictness and confidentiality involved, and what really helps is that Mitch is making really good money. You know who doesn’t like it? His wife Abby, who believes the firm is intervening with their lives in a way that makes her uncomfortable.

Once he passes the bar exam, Mitch starts working long hours and never is at home, making Abby even more furious about their situation. It’s with Avery, though, that he realizes that the firm is involved with hiding a lot of money for corporations and making sure they don’t get taxed properly. When sent to the Cayman Islands for work, Mitch realizes something else: their are four deceased associates’ information in the firm’s condo there.

The security officer of the firm then sends a prostitute to seduce Mitch and blackmails him with the photos, which leads Mitch to hire a private investigator to try and uncover what happened to the other associates. However, his investigator is murdered by hitmen. The FBI then confront Mitch and reveal that his firm’s top client is the Chicago mafia, and that most of what they do is actually tax fraud.

The other associates died when they tried to leave the firm, so the FBI warns him about how Mitch is being watched and how his house is bugged. He agrees to work with them for his brother’s release from prison and $1.5 million, then his brother is released—but the FBI actually plans to send him back once they get what they need.

Abby starts planning to leave Mitch after he confesses, too, adding in even more complications. At the firm he realizes they charge their clients more than they should, which is a different form of fraud. He needs more information from the Cayman condo, but Avery starts working there. Abby rolls up to the condo and seduces Avery to get what they need, but then she says something on a tapped phone that tips off the hitmen.

Avery tells her that the firm sent the prostitute to Mitch, then tells her to leave. The hitmen kill him instead, and Abby escapes successfully. The mafia is tipped off that Ray has been sent to the FBI, leading to more men to be sent after Mitch. He flees but succeeds in getting the invoices from a client, proving the overbilling, leading to the FBI to go after the firm.

The FBI keeps up their end of the deal, and Mitch makes up with Abby in the meantime. The movie ends with them returning to Boston and leaving Tennessee behind while his brother lives on the Cayman Islands with his newfound wealth.

Overall Thoughts

I honestly came into this movie barely reading the synopsis, and while I did find it pretty entertaining, it was a struggle to get through at other times. It was a bit too long for the material it was covering. I don’t dislike long movies, but the more that goes into a film, the more it needs to be done right.

I also felt like the plot was fairly interesting, hence why I wanted to keep watching until the end. It’s fairly standard in some ways for this kind of movie, but the actors do a good job and I didn’t want to click out of it for story reasons. It was more for pacing.

I say watch this one if you’re really into legal thrillers. If not you might not be as into this movie, as it’s a bit long for what it does, but give it a chance if you’re interested. I’m glad I watched it, but I don’t know if I will return to it in the near future.

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