Holbrook almost always plays the seemingly respectable man with dark secrets. One glimpse of Hal Holbrook as the head of the Firm, for example, and we know it's a shady outfit. Sydney Pollack, the director, likes to make long, ambitious movies ('Out Of Africa,' 'Havana') and he's comfortable working with familiar stars he uses them as character-building shorthand. But I didn't care, since the form of the movie was effective even when the details were vague. By the end, despite McDeere's breathless explanations during phone calls in the middle of a chase sequence, I was fairly confused about his strategy. Based on the novel by John Grisham, as adapted by three of the most expensive screenwriters in the business ( David Rabe, Robert Towne and David Rayfiel), 'The Firm' takes 2 1/2 hours to find its way through a moral and legal maze. The story is fairly clear in its general outlines, but sometimes baffling on the specifics. To save himself, he has to use both brain and muscle, outrunning killers and outthinking lawyers, to save both his life and his license to practice law.

Without revealing too much of the plot, I can say that McDeere is eventually being blackmailed simultaneously by both the FBI and the firm's security chief (kindly old Wilford Brimley, very effective in a rare outing as a villain). This one milks them for all they're worth. Some movies about the law oversimplify the legal aspects. An FBI man spills the beans: only a quarter of the clients are above-board, and the rest are thieves, scoundrels and money-launderers, with the firm's partners acting as bagmen shipping the money to offshore banks. And gradually McDeere begins to realize his new law firm is in league with the devil. They are provided with a house and a shiny new Mercedes - both bugged, as it turns out. Mitch moves to Memphis with his wife, Abby ( Jeanne Tripplehorn, the peculiar psychiatrist in ' Basic Instinct').

The Firm by Erin Mc Luckie Moya