The Firm: Critic Reviews

The Firm amusingly satirizes the New Traditionalist aspirations of today's young urban elite -- not so much the lifestyle itself as the illusion of utter security it represents.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A smooth adaptation of John Grisham's giant bestseller that is destined to be one of the summer's strong audience pleasers.

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.

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

The book moved at turbo speed. At two and a half hours, the movie crawls.

Too-long Grisham thriller is full of adult themes.

This is a professional machine of a movie that compresses huge amounts of information into its two and a half hours of screen time. But it's so weighed down by detail, it fails to generate any real suspense.

The first in a long series of unsatisfying Grisham adaptations.

This legal thriller is smartly directed and well scripted (by some of Hollywood's top writers), but, alas, Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise, playing yet another variation of his screen image.

What starts out as interesting becomes increasingly hokey and silly -- Wilford Brimley is ludicrously cast as the firm's senior hit man -- where it should be intense and suspenseful.

Adorning the film, in supporting roles, are its saving graces.

Even Tom Cruise is a winner in a Pollack-Grisham collaboration.

Cruise at the top of his game