The company (film)

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Movie
German title The Company
Original title The Firm
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1993
length 148 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Sydney Pollack
script David Rabe ,
David Rayfiel ,
Robert Towne
production Lindsay Doran ,
Michael Hausman ,
Sydney Pollack
music Dave Grusin ,
Lyle Lovett et al. a.
camera John Seale
cut Fredric Steinkamp ,
William Steinkamp
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2

The firm (original title: The Firm ) is an American feature film from 1993. The director was Sydney Pollack , the script was written by David Rabe , David Rayfiel and Robert Towne based on the novel of the same name by John Grisham . The main roles were played by Tom Cruise , Jeanne Tripplehorn and Gene Hackman .

action

Mitch McDeere received his law degree from Harvard University with excellent grades and received numerous job offers from prestigious tax and business law firms across the country. McDeere chooses the law firm (“Company”) Bendini, Lambert & Locke , based in Memphis , which is financially very generous, presents itself as particularly family-friendly and obviously cares about the personal well-being and private life of its employees. McDeere and his wife move to Memphis, live in a large house there, drive a new Mercedes convertible and initially feel good: he is getting used to the new legal profession, she has found a new job as a teacher.

Shortly after starting work, two lawyers from the firm die and McDeere notices the first oddities. Through the FBI he learns that a total of four lawyers in the firm have now been mysteriously killed. The FBI also tells him that McDeere's law firm works for a mafia family and is about to be broken up by the FBI at some point. He is supposed to procure and put through files that the law firm is storing on the Cayman Islands , and thereby support the investigation, as otherwise he could be prosecuted himself. McDeere knows that betraying client secrets could cost him his license to practice law. He is also blackmailed by his employers with photos of an adultery that the law firm has orchestrated, and a private detective he hires is shot. In his investigation, McDeere notes that the FBI's allegations are correct. At the same time, he has to be very careful, as he knows from the FBI that he is being monitored and wiretapped by the company.

By chance, McDeere discovered in the course of his legal work that the law firm usually bills its clients for too many working hours. Since the bills were sent by post and mostly across states, each of the cases involved serious cases of postal fraud , a federal crime that is severely punished in the USA. McDeere suggests that the FBI convict his bosses of mail fraud. He sends corresponding reports to the firm's clients, including the mafia bosses. He explains to him that as your legal representative he is subject to confidentiality, but would like to represent you in asserting claims against the law firm. He has thus successfully played off the mafia bosses and the law firm owners against each other, so that he does not have to expect to be persecuted by the mafia, nor by the law firm owners, who have to fear the revenge of the mafia family if they should toy with the idea To avenge McDeere for what happened.

With the successful transfer of the firm's owners, he also satisfied the FBI and McDeere and his wife happily return to Boston to be able to build a new life there.

synchronization

The German dubbing was commissioned by Berliner Synchron GmbH ; Jürgen Neu was responsible for the dialogue direction and the German dialogue book.

role actor German speaker
Mitch McDeere Tom Cruise Stephan Schwartz
Abby McDeere Jeanne Tripplehorn Sabine Jaeger
Avery Tolar Gene Hackman Klaus Sunshine
Oliver Lambert Hal Holbrook Friedrich Schoenfelder
Lamar Quinn Terry Kinney Ulrich Matthes
William Devasher Wilford Brimley Joachim Nottke
Wayne Tarrance Ed Harris Wolfgang Condrus
Tammy Hemphill Holly Hunter Marina Krogull
Ray McDeere David Strathairn Eberhard Prüter
Eddie Lomax Gary Busey Hans-Jürgen Wolf
F. Denton Voyles Steven Hill Edgar Ott
The northern man Tobin Bell Helmut Gauss
Sonny Capps Jerry Weintraub Gerd Holtenau
A lawyer Jonathan Kaplan Christian Olsen
Tommie Morolto Paul Sorvino Jürgen Kluckert
Joey Morolto Joe Viterelli Heinz Giese
Young woman on the beach Karina Lombard Daniela Thuar

Awards

Holly Hunter was honored for her role in the film awards Oscar and BAFTA Award nominations. Dave Grusin was nominated for an Oscar and a Grammy Award for film score ; he won the BMI Film & TV Award . Tom Cruise was nominated for the MTV Movie Award in two categories .

The film won the People's Choice Award .

The German Film and Media Evaluation FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the title valuable.

background

While the title character Mitch McDeere acts as Robin Hood in the book at the expense of the law firm and then retreats to the Caribbean with a few million dollars of misappropriated black money, he finds a solution in the film version that does not bring him into conflict with the law and him enables another professional practice and an arrangement with the mafia.

There were disputes between Cruise and Hackman about the naming of the leading actors in the trailers. Hackman's contract stipulated that his name (as is usual with leading roles) should be mentioned before the film title. In Cruise's contract, however, was that his name was the only one to be mentioned before the title. As a result, Hackman decreed that his name should not appear in the trailers at all and his appearance in the film was such a surprise for the audience. In the opening credits of the film itself, Hackman's name appeared after Cruises and before the title.

Reviews

The film received mostly positive reviews. The film review portal Rotten Tomatoes gives the film 75% positive reviews and it has a Metascore of 58 out of 100 on Metacritic .

The Lexicon of International Films wrote that the plot from the novel would develop "under Sydney Pollack's experienced direction into an exciting entertainment film with carefully profiled characters and outstanding actors".

The magazine Prisma wrote that the film was a "well-staged and exciting political thriller, which now and then takes surprising turns", but offers a "stupid, because completely implausible ending".

Sequels

From January 2012, the US network NBC showed a continuation of the film as a TV series. Josh Lucas played the role of Tom Cruise here. The series started about ten years after the film. Other leading actors included Molly Parker and Juliette Lewis . The Firm was discontinued after a season.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Synchronkartei.de
  2. ↑ The company at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
  3. ↑ The company at Metacritic (English)
  4. ^ Lexicon of International Films , accessed on September 16, 2008
  5. ↑ Prism

Web links

Commons : Film locations of The Firm (1993)  - collection of images, videos and audio files