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Especially within the last two decades, Tom Cruise has built up quite a strong reputation among the audiences of today as one of the best action stars currently living. Whether it’s hanging off the side of a plane flying midair in the Mission: Impossible films, or flying them himself in Top Gun: Maverick, he’s proven time and time again by performing his own stunts that there is no limit to his dedication to his craft and the audience’s entertainment. Before he became one of the leading faces of the action genre, there was a time when he was a far more dramatic actor. Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, Cruise starred in several classic films, playing roles in which he didn’t need any kind of stunts or spectacle to hold the audience’s attention, only a captivating performance with a charismatic presence. When it comes to what might be considered his best work in the latter decade, it doesn’t get much better than his work in The Firm.
Based on the novel of the same name by John Grisham, The Firm was not a film that required any car chases, explosions, or death-defying stunt work from Cruise to further its levels of intensity, as its story and performances alone already provided just the right amount. It’s been more than two decades since the film’s release, and while it has been rightfully praised as one of the best film adaptations of one of Grisham’s books, it’s also one that doesn’t get brought up nearly as much as some of the other inclusions of Cruise’s filmography when it comes to which ones are considered to be the best.
The Firm Delivers a Different Kind of Intensity and Thrill Than Most Other Tom Cruise Movies
Image via Paraomount Pictures.
Much like in A Few Good Men, The Firm features Tom Cruise playing the part of a young lawyer with the role of Mitch McDeere. Unlike the former film, however, the character of Mitch isn’t an underachiever-turned-passionate advocate who is looking to find justice in the murder of colleagues, but rather a successful Harvard graduate trying to stay on the right side of the law and preserve the safety of both his career and his family. After being recruited into the boutique law firm of Bendini, Lambert & Locke, Mitch soon finds himself caught in the middle of both the firm’s sinister connections to a mafia crime family and the FBI’s manipulative coercion into helping them expose his superior’s dark side, while also trying to ensure the safety of both his family and his own professional standing.
Directed by Sydney Pollack (who would later star alongside Cruise in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut), The Firm manages to capture all the intensity and suspense from Grisham’s novel. His filmmaking techniques give the audience a sense of entrapment alongside Mitch in a morally ambiguous world of corruption, and leave them on the edge of their seats, wondering just how they’re going to get out of it.
From Pollack’s direction to the screenplay and even Dave Grusin’s musical score, the film isn’t just worthy of praise for its faithfulness to the source material but for just how well put-together it is overall. Of course, there are also the performances from its all-star cast to consider, with the likes of Holly Hunter, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ed Harris, and the late Gene Hackman all turning out highly engaging performances. None of them, however, manages to outshine Cruise, and his particular casting is one in which the film would arguably have been less effective without.
Tom Cruise’s Performance Is One of the Best Things About The Firm (and One of the Best of His Career)
Image via Paramount Pictures.
As fun as it can be to see Tom Cruise participate in stunt work and visual spectacle, it’s always an even greater pleasure whenever he takes on a role that doesn’t require any of that. It’s in these kinds of films that Cruise is allowed to remind the audience just how good an actor he really is, and his performance as Mitch McDeere is a shining example of that. Unlike so many of the other roles that Cruise has played in so many other films, the character of Mitch in The Firm isn’t some kind of highly experienced superhuman with superior physical prowess, nor is he burdened with any pressure from his living or deceased father, but rather just an ordinary man trying to fight his way out of a dangerously out of the ordinary situation.
In his performance, Cruise is just as intense and captivating as the story itself, and it’s also one of the more easily relatable characters that he’s ever played. He gets to show off a truly dynamic range of emotions in the way he effectively captures Mitch’s transformative character arc, going from an excitedly wide-eyed hotshot to a fearful and desperate man on the run, until finally reaching full development by coming out on top by managing to outsmart both sides.
Of course, that’s not to say that the film doesn’t allow him the opportunity to indulge in a few of the on-screen tropes he’s become so well-known for. His escape from the firm, one of the film’s most memorable scenes, has him running at full speed, down and across various halls and stairways, before breaking and jumping out of a window to land on the soft cotton cargo of a delivery truck below. What makes this particular sequence even better is knowing that, even back before his Mission: Impossible days, he was still performing his own stunts.
It’s the kind of role that resulted in a performance that those who have seen the film certainly would not mind seeing more of. Given that Grisham has recently followed the original novel up with an unexpected sequel, placing his lead character in a completely different kind of danger, many fans have since speculated whether they may see Cruise don the suit of Mitch McDeere once again.
Is There Any Possibility of a Sequel to The Firm?
Image via Paramount Pictures.
Even though John Grisham is no stranger to writing sequels to his works, crafting an entire series with his character Theodore Boone consisting of six books, he’s also surprised his readers with some more unexpected continuations that most of them originally believed would remain as stand-alone stories. In 2020, he wrote and published A Time for Mercy, a follow-up to his beloved novel, A Time to Kill, before revisiting Mitch McDeere with The Exchange in 2023. Taking place fifteen years after the original novel, the sequel finds Mitch, now the partner of a major law firm, having to navigate the complexities of international law in a case involving a Turkish construction company suing the Libyan government, while also trying to save his colleague, Giovanna, after she is kidnapped in Libya, and must deal with their perpetrators’ demand of a random.
Although Cruise himself has yet to comment on the possibility of an adaptation of The Exchange, his success with Top Gun: Maverick has left many fans hoping to see him reprise his role as Mitch McDeere in a similar kind of legacy sequel. It also remains a question whether it’s something he has any real interest in doing, but given that it’s been quite a while since the last time he participated in any kind of non-action or big-budgeted spectacle film, seeing him return to a role that would have him showing the true strengths of his talent as an actor is something that will always be welcomed by his fans.
While some obvious changes need to be made (the time jump from the first film would need to be double the number of years as in the book, for example), a sequel to The Firm is something that could very easily be pulled off if there was interest in making it. Unfortunately, seeing how the first film is owned by Paramount Pictures and that Cruise recently ended his producing partnership with them in favor of working with Warner Bros., the current possibility of it doesn’t seem very high. Even Grisham himself has since cast doubt on it since the release of the book, claiming in a post on Goodreads that «It looks doubtful» because there appears to be very «little interest ‘out there’ in Hollywood».
As fun as it would be to see Cruise have a similar return to The Firm as he has with Top Gun, the former film is one of those classic works that doesn’t necessarily need a sequel. With everything that still holds up about it, it’s a real shame that Cruise doesn’t act in these same kinds of films anymore, and The Firm truly stands as an eternal monument to not just how much better his acting talents could be put to use if allowed to do so.
