The Firm

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Teaser Trailer Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Released	1993
Running Time	148:14 minutes
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (80:34)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Selection then Programme
Region	4	Director	Sydney Pollack
Studio Distributor	Paramount	Starring	Tom Cruise Jeanne Tripplehorn Ed Harris Holly Hunter Hal Holbrook David Strathairn
RPI	$39.95	Music	Dave Grusin

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 448Kb/s) Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 224Kb/s) Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	Greek English Spanish Hebrew Croatian Italian Portuguese	Annoying Product Placement	Yes, mildly
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, at the start of the credits

    John Grisham has got to be the best friend of every American lawyer. He consistently writes thrillers based around honourable, brave and ethical lawyers triumphing over the forces of evil. The Firm is no exception, and in the able hands of director Sydney Pollack, John Grisham's novel is brought to the big screen as a taut, spellbinding thriller.

    These days, whenever I get a chance to review a DVD, I find myself frequently checking the time elapsed meter, and start to get very fidgety at around the 60 minute mark. Whilst watching The Firm, I looked at the time counter once - at the 15 minute mark. The next time I looked at the counter, over 2 hours later, it was after the movie had finished, to read the exact running time of the DVD. Being totally engrossed in a movie as I was for this one is a rarity for me these days, even more so when you consider that I have seen this movie before, and so am familiar with the twists and turns of the story.

    Mitch McDeere (Tom Cruise) is a hot-shot Harvard Law graduate who is made an offer he cannot refuse to join a relatively small ("only 41 lawyers..."), but very well-paying law firm in Memphis. He and his wife, Abigail (Jeanne Tripplehorn) move to Memphis, where they are showered with gifts and hospitality. But, all is not as it seems in paradise...

    Strong performances by Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman carry this movie. A decent supporting cast, including an all-but-unrecognizable Ed Harris, help to maintain the pace at other times.
 

    Q: Why does everyone hate lawyers on sight? A: It saves time. Sorry. I lied.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. It is 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is generally quite sharp with a fair amount of detail on offer, although the level of detail falls off significantly in darker scenes, with only limited shadow detail available. There was no low level noise, but there was a moderate amount of grain spread throughout the transfer. Shots of the sky were particularly problematic for grain, as were the low-light shots of Tom Cruise at around the 67 minute mark.

    Colours were generally nicely rendered, particularly in the brightly lit scenes, with the scenes set in the Cayman Islands often exploding with vibrant colours. Darker scenes displayed a more muted palette. There was no oversaturation or colour bleed.

    There were no MPEG artefacts as such, although there was a possible MPEG motion compensation artefact between 35:34 and 35:43, where the room's chandelier shifted subtly left and right in a most disconcerting manner. Aliasing was well-controlled by this transfer, with the worst instance being represented by a minor instance on a bookcase at 15:36. Film artefacts were surprisingly frequent and surprisingly large, particularly when taking into consideration the relative youth of this movie. Whilst never overly distracting, they were certainly more noticeable than I expected them to be, and were probably the most disappointing aspect of this transfer.

    This DVD is RSDL formatted, with the layer change occurring at 80:34. Whilst noticeable, it is not overly bothersome.
 
 

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue is generally clear, with a few dialogue peaks marred by minor distortion, and occasional lapses into quite muffled dialogue. At no time, however, is the dialogue anything but easily intelligible, important for a movie such as this one where the rapid pace is such that you cannot afford to miss even a single line of dialogue. Some of the dialogue appears fairly poorly ADRed, with poor spatial integration. Other than these marginal ADR moments, there were no specific audio sync problems evident in this soundtrack.

    The musical score is by Dave Grusin, and it truly makes the movie what it is. Predominately jazzy and piano-based, the music ranges in emotion from jaunty to aggressive to discordant to melodic, all brilliantly married to the on-screen action in one of the best examples of musical subtlety that I have ever had the pleasure of hearing. Not very many movies are suited to this relatively minimalist style of score, but The Firm certainly is, and the music plunges you right into the middle of the action from its very first note.

    The surround channels had essentially no use, and certainly no split surround use by this fundamentally stereo soundtrack. The music and sound effects were spread widely across the front soundstage, but the rears were limited to minimal ambience, such as a slight echo from the rears during the jail scene, and some slight musical ambience. Similarly, the subwoofer had essentially nothing to do.
 
 

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Teaser Trailer

Theatrical Trailer

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna (read my bio)
29th May 2001