John Grisham's 'The Firm' 1991

 

Ted Smart century edition - 1993

On 2nd January 2021, I watched the DVD of the 1993 film and did a Blog on it (linked to Three Days of the Condor) that same evening. I recently bought a first edition, dust wrappered copy of the book 'for a song' in a local second-hand bookseller's emporium. After reading it, I watched (for the third or fourth time) the film again, on DVD. My thoughts?  

John Grisham practised law from 1981 - planning to become a tax lawyer himself, before choosing trial law - for about a decade, and published his first novel, A Time to Kill in 1989. Its sales were not impressive. However, it was his second book, The Firm, which he started to write the day after he had finished his first novel, which came out in 1993, that established him in the front rank of thriller writers.  Apparently, when he sent the draft to his agent, bootleg copies were made and the book was circulated around Hollywood without the author's knowledge. It was purchased by Paramount Pictures for $600,000. The knowledge of this drove the demand for a book deal and Doubleday won the contract. The novel spent 47 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and  was the No. 1 novel of 1991. The success of both the book and the film led to a 2012 T.V. show, set a decade after the original story. It ran for 22 episodes but for only one Season.

DVD - of 1993 film

The film kept much of the earlier part of the plot, with some scenes directly copying the original - the bugging of the McDeere home, the springing of his brother from prison, even the water sprinkler soaking his colleague Lamar Quinn. There are major changes towards the end though. The exciting scenes when Abby McDeere flies to the Caymans to bamboozle a drugged Avery Tolar and McDeere being chased by the firm's security guys around Memphis are not in the book. Moreover, in the film, McDeere, rather than betray his oath as a lawyer by turning the confidential files over to the FBI, finds a devious legal way to keep both the FBI and the Mafia off his back so he can continue to practise law elsewhere in the USA. Although I felt the last twenty minutes or so of the film was rushed - I would have preferred to see the firm's lawyers being arrested, the boat sailing off with Ray and the girl etc. - I think it was an improvement on the book. The story was somehow 'tighter' (perhaps inevitable, comparing a 148 minutes viewing with a long read) and McDeere's character is more consistent. The problem with watching a movie before the book, is that the actors remain in your mind's eye as you read: Tom Cruise is Mc'Deere; Gene Hackman, Holly Hunter, Ed Harris, David Strathairn and Jeanne Tripplehorn are all excellent castings. The other, smaller roles - such as the actors who played the Mafia duo, the security chief DeVasher and his blonde sidekick, and Eddie Lomax, whose film 'death' was more gruesome than that in the book - cement the viewer's pleasure. 

I shall keep the novel with the DVD and may well return to them again one day. Meanwhile, I have purchased the DVD of The Pelican Brief (1993 film), John Grisham's third novel, which was published in 1992, a year after The Firm.