THE FIRM Starring Tom Cruise, Gene Hackman, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Holly Hunter, Ed Harris, David Strathairn, Hal Holbrook, Gary Busey, Wilford Brimley. Directed by Sydney Pollack.
When Tom Cruise was off in Ireland in 1991 filming Far and Away, Paramount sent him a novel that legions of Americans were tearing through-John Grisham's The Firm. Devouring it in an afternoon, he became hooked on the idea of playing Mitch McDeere, a hungry Harvard law grad who takes a too-good-to-be- true job at a Memphis law firm only to find that it really is too good to be true: The firm represents the mob, and the FBI wants McDeere to finger the bad guys or be fingered himself. Though already set to play a lawyer in A Few Good Men, Cruise says he saw The Firm as a departure: "Yes, I'm playing a lawyer again, but having a profession doesn't define the person. This is Mitch's personal story. He gets sucked into this world, and then he has to crawl out of the hole." Cruise was captivated not so much by the legal intrigue as by its effect on McDeere and his wife, Abby (Tripplehorn). "Here's a guy who worked so hard, and made one mistake in his life-and he's trapped," says Cruise. "The whole movie, Mitch is carrying a lie on his shoulders. He sleeps with another woman. He's got this whole firm on his shoulders, hiding that away. It's a movie about keeping secrets and then secrets being revealed." As production neared, the filmmakers had some secrets of their own in store; in an apparent attempt to bolster The Firm's female appeal, Pollack toyed with casting Meryl Streep as McDeere's mentor, a male character in the book. Eventually, Hackman got the role. But an even bigger change made its way to the screen: Pollack chose to ratchet up the tension by altering the novel's climactic final third. Cruise-who reportedly was paid $12 million for starring in The Firm-swears the unexpected ending maintains the integrity of the novel. "Although the third act is different from the book," he says, "it is still thrilling. That's why people read books. And that's why people go to the movies." (June 30) Buzz: Can Cruise lose? Sure he can; last summer's Far and Away grossed a relatively modest $58 million. But with Tom back in his element and quite a few good men in the supporting cast, The Firm should hit $100 million in a blink.
LIFE WITH MIKEY Starring Michael J. Fox, Nathan Lane, Cyndi Lauper, Christina Vidal. Directed by James Lapine.
In a case of art skewering life, Fox plays a washed-up sitcom star trying to relive his glory days as a youth. He and his brother (Lane) head a run-down talent agency for child actors; they're desperately seeking the perfect Cute Kid to act in a cookie commercial when a young con artist (newcomer Vidal) tries to pick Fox's pocket and ends up his pick. "It's not cloying," says director Lapine, who spent two months screen- testing hundreds of kids before he found his star, an 11-year-old Queens native. "Christina is street smart, tough, and natural. This isn't Curly Sue, which I was trying to avoid like the plague." And it isn't Family Ties: The Aftermath, either, though the sitcom's star says he relished the real-life reverberations. "I like when I get a chance to wink at the audience," says Fox. "There's a line in the movie where I'm < talking about a performance and I say, 'People have won Emmys for less than that. I know I did.' Lines like that taste good." (June 4) Buzz: In movies that let him do his charming-wise-guy thing, Fox can be formidable: See Doc Hollywood. (Or not: See The Hard Way.) The terrible title- It's a movie! No, it's a cereal commercial!-won't help.
