Factual error: Near the end of the movie, Agent Terrence asks Mitch why he didn't release the recording to the media. Mitch replies that it would have been against the law. This is actually incorrect. Tennessee, where the movie is based, is a one-party consent state. Which means only one party needs to give consent to a conversation being recorded. That one party is Mitch McDeere.
The Firm (1993)
Plot summary
Directed by: Sydney Pollack
Starring: Gene Hackman, Tom Cruise, Ed Harris, Hal Holbrook, Jeanne Tripplehorn
Harvard Law School grad, Mitch McDeere, is made an offer he can’t refuse. To recruit Mitch, a prestigious Memphis law firm dangles a lucrative salary, a Mercedes, and paying off his college loans as incentives. Haunted by his humble beginnings and a family secret, Mitch seizes the opportunity. His wife, Abby, is reluctant, however. Mitch soon discovers things seem a bit peculiar. The firm takes an abnormal interest in their employees’ private lives, and Mitch leans that no one ever quits. In fact, the only ones who left the firm died shortly after.
Mitch is contacted by an FBI agent who tells him that the majority of the firm’s clients are Mafia whose money is laundered into offshore accounts. New lawyers at the firm are unaware of the Mafia connection, but they are gradually coerced into the illegal activities and forced to stay. Anyone attempting to leave is murdered. The FBI wants Mitch’s help.
Mitch wants out, but he is being squeezed by the firm, who suspect he may know their secret, and also the FBI, who blackmail him for his assistance. Mitch is unknowingly tied to illegal activities at the firm, and the FBI threatens to have him disbarred if he doesn’t cooperate. To save his law career and escape the firm, Mitch agrees to help the FBI, but he insists that his brother, Ray, who was convicted on trumped-up charges, be released from prison.
Ray West
More mistakes in The Firm
Mitch McDeere: Let me get this straight: you want me to steal files from the firm, turn them over to the FBI, send my colleagues to jail.
Wayne Tarrance: They roped you into this.
Mitch McDeere: Breach attorney-client privilege, thus getting myself disbarred for life, then testify in open court against the Mafia.
Wayne Tarrance: Well, unfortunately, Mitch.
Mitch McDeere: Let me ask you something: are you out of your fucking mind?
Trivia: Director Sydney Pollack provides the voice of the prison warden on the phone informing Terrance that a prison guard sent an unauthorised fax regarding Mitch's brother Ray.
Question: Every time I watch this movie I wonder what happened to the beer that Tom spilled while discovering the boxes of files in the Grand Caymen condo?
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Answer: I've wondered about that, too. Avery appears to have somehow overlooked it, though it was in a highly visible and in a sensitive place (the locked closet). He probably returned late that night, and by the next day, the maid could have cleaned most of it up before he noticed anything. Also, on that particular trip, Avery may have had no reason to look inside the locked closet, so he would not have seen the broken glass. The spilled liquid outside the door would have dried quickly.
raywest ★