Before The Firm became the best-selling novel in America, John Grisham was a civil litigation attorney who had won a seat in the Mississippi House of Representatives. He might have continued on that political path if Paramount executive Lance Young hadn't been bowled over by the unpublished manuscript of The Firm in December of 1989. Grisham's first novel, A Time to Kill, had been rejected by 26 publishers, and was eventually released by the tiny Wynwood Press. The Firm had already been rejected four times before Young paid $600,000 for the film rights. That spurred Doubleday to acquire it for publication, adding another $200,000 to Grisham's coffers.

The Firm was an enormous hit for Doubleday in 1991, selling an astonishing seven million copies before the film version was made in 1993. Lance Young's bet had paid off beyond his wildest dreams. But they still had to make the movie, and now with the intense pressure of blockbuster expectations. The film would be produced by Scott Rudin and John Davis, who had both originally sent the manuscript to Young for consideration. As with all producers in the 1990s, Rudin and Davis immediately targeted Tom Cruise, going so far as to meet him on the set of A Few Good Men (1992), circumventing his agents, which was against studio rules. According to the AFI Catalog, they wanted him to both direct and star.

He only expressed interest in starring, which depended on who they hired as director. Variety reported Paramount's interest in Lili Fini Zanuck, Kevin Reynolds, John McTiernan, John Badham and Ron Howard before they got reliable veteran Sydney Pollack under contract. The screenplay went through multiple drafts, including work by David Rabe, David Rayfiel and Robert Towne. Rabe was left off the official credit list and would successfully sue to be added.

The Firm follows hotshot young law student Mitch McDeere (Cruise) as he is wooed by every major law firm in America during his final year in Harvard Law School. Along with his schoolteacher wife Abby (Jeanne Tripplehorn), they turn down the big coastal firms to take a job in Memphis with Bendini, Lambert & Locke, led with regal authority by Oliver Lambert (Hal Holbrook). They offer him the highest salary and a familial atmosphere that appeals to Mitch, who grew up in a broken home and had to scrap his way to the top. But the firm has its secrets, as Mitch soon discovers when two of the firm's lawyers die of suspicious circumstances in the Cayman Islands.

Mitch starts seeing the security director William Devasher (a harrumphing Wilford Brimley) around every corner and has a strange encounter with an FBI agent (Ed Harris). With his suspicions skyrocketing, the firm pushes senior lawyer Avery Tolar (Gene Hackman) to take him under his wing. Tolar is an avuncular glad hander of the old school, whose gruff charm isn't enough to keep Mitch from digging into the firm's dirty laundry. Another death puts Mitch in the crosshairs of the FBI, the firm and organized crime. Only his legal training, his resourceful wife and the creatively mischievous secretary Tammy (Holly Hunter) are there to help him out of this lethal jam.

The film adaptation tweaks the book's ending to titillating ends, but audiences didn't seem to mind, as it trailed only Jurassic Park (1993) and The Fugitive (1993) in domestic grosses, making over $158 million. Seen today, it's remarkable a legal thriller with no CGI apocalypses could be a blockbuster. But the novel was a national phenomenon, Tom Cruise was as bankable a star as there was and Sydney Pollack delivered a workmanlike thriller with meaty performances throughout. While Cruise makes a sympathetic babyface hero, it's the conflicted Avery Tolar who is the heart of the film. A corrupted man exhausted by the toll of his crimes, Gene Hackman turns him into tragic collateral damage to the firm's moral-warping crimes. Playing him as a playboy gone to seed, he looks exhausted and his suits are as worn out as his jokes. And in the final act, when he could reassert his villainy, he instead falls deeper into sleep, waiting for the world to disappear.

The massive success of The Firm made Grisham adaptations a Hollywood addiction throughout the 1990s - they would adapt his grocery lists if they could. There were seven total films made in the decade, though none ever made as much money as The Firm.

By R. Emmet Sweeney