The Firm is a 1993 legal thriller directed by Sydney Pollack, adapted from John Grisham's 1991 novel by David Rabe, Robert Towne and David Rayfiel. It stars Tom Cruise as Mitch McDeere, alongside a genuinely absurd supporting cast: Gene Hackman, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ed Harris, Holly Hunter, Hal Holbrook, David Strathairn, Gary Busey, Wilford Brimley and Paul Sorvino. Released on 30 June 1993, it was made for forty-two million dollars and grossed over two hundred and seventy million, making it the highest grossing R-rated film of that year and the third highest grossing film of 1993 overall. It also came out the year I was born, a fact I am noting once and then setting down permanently.

The setup is pure Grisham. Mitch is a brilliant, ambitious Harvard law graduate from a poor background who accepts a position at a small, immaculately presented Memphis firm that offers considerably more money than anyone else, along with a car, a house and an unusual level of interest in the state of his marriage. It takes a while, but it emerges that the firm's real problem is not its billing practices. It is its clientele, who are organised crime.

I described this in my notes as an over two hour experience, which was charitable of me. It runs a hundred and fifty four minutes, which is two and a half hours, and while it is well paced for a film of that length, you do feel it.

By my own informal count, roughly six of those minutes are Tom Cruise running. Simply running, at speed, through Memphis. And I spent a good portion of that time wondering whether this is the production where he worked out that he enjoys it, because the man has since constructed an entire second career out of sprinting flat out in well-tailored clothing. It is worth noting too that he played a cocky young lawyer in consecutive years, in A Few Good Men in 1992 and here in 1993, so the early nineties Cruise archetype was well established.

I enjoyed this, genuinely. Pollack knows exactly what he is doing, the Memphis locations are used beautifully, and the cast is so deep that Gary Busey turns up, chews an entire scene and leaves. There are moments that very clearly locate the film in its era, and I do not think it is especially productive to dwell on them, but they are unmistakably there.

My one real complaint is the music, which is a lot. At several points the score is doing so much work that I found myself attending more closely to the piano than to the people threatening to kill the protagonist. I assumed I was simply being fussy about this, right up until I looked into it and discovered that the score, composed by Dave Grusin, is almost exclusively solo piano, an unusual and genuinely bold choice for a thriller, and that it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score. So it was indeed a lot. It was a lot in an Oscar-nominated manner. It lost to John Williams for Schindler's List, which is difficult to argue with.