Review: NBC puts Josh Lucas in 'The Firm'
Belated sequel to Cruise/Grisham legal thriller falls flat
- Critic's Rating C
- Readers' Rating C
Josh Lucas as Mitch McDeere in the new "The Firm."
Credit: NBC
Watching the two-hour pilot episode of NBC's "The Firm" (Sunday at 9 p.m.), my mind was filled with many questions, such as:
* What are the odds that popular early '90s legal thrillers "Presumed Innocent" and "The Firm" would both get made-for-TV sequels within a month of each other?
* Why has NBC - which already has "Parenthood," recently flopped with "Prime Suspect" and has new series based on "The Munsters," "Romancing the Stone" and Hannibal Lecter, among others, in development - turned into the spin-off network?
* Why not just remake the original John Grisham story with tweaks for an ongoing series rather than making it a 10-years-later sequel where Mitch McDeere again joins up with a law firm that is secretly up to no good, making him into the John McClane of the legal world?
* Are Josh Lucas, Molly Parker, Callum Keith Rennie and Juliette Lewis the exact people I'd cast to replace, respectively, Tom Cruise, Jeanne Tripplehorn, David Strathairn and Holly Hunter? And if this were a remake rather than a sequel, who would be the 2011 equivalent of Wilford Brimley circa 1993?
* Why is NBC debuting this show with a two-hour pilot and not on its regular night (it'll air Thursdays at 10, replacing "Prime Suspect") when the networks haven't had much commercial success with two-hour pilots in a long time?
Mainly, I asked myself these questions and more because two hours (90 minutes without commercials) is an awfully long time to watch a pedestrian TV legal drama that carries a vague resemblance to a movie and book I kind of remember enjoying a few decades ago.
It's been 10 years since the events of the original story, and Mitch (Lucas), wife Abby (Parker), daughter Claire (Natasha Calis), brother Ray (Rennie) and secretary Tammy (Lewis) have recently left the witness protection program and set up shop in Washington, D.C. Where Mitch was once a young go-getter specializing in financial law, he's now a champion for the little guy who takes on criminal defense cases and longshot civil suits. (Think Bobby Donnell from "The Practice" with less shouting.) Recasting aside, he so barely resembles the Mitch played by Cruise that it's almost a shock when a character brings up his old specialty. This Mitch isn't looking to climb any ladders; he's the kind of crusader of whom a judge might tell a new client, "You'll find a lot of good human beings in this courthouse, and a lot of talented lawyers. What you won't find are many people who are both. You've got one here in Mr. McDeere."
The pilot opens with a sequence of Mitch being chased by goons through various D.C. landmarks, then pulls the familiar trick of flashing back to several weeks earlier so we can slowly but surely see how he got there. Some series use the in media res opening to set the stage for lots of craziness throughout, but too many shows - and "The Firm" is unfortunately one of them - do it because they know that the plot required to get to that entry point is really boring, and the audience needs something fancy at the start to hold their attention during the long expository passages.
Most of the ensuing time in the pilot actually has very little to do with how Mitch got into trouble, or even with how he winds up teaming up with a too-good-to-be-true firm run by Alex Clark (Tricia Helfer from "Battlestar Galactica"). Mainly, we spend time on Mitch's defense of a teenager accused of stabbing a high school classmate, and then on a wrinkle created by the victim's vengeful father. It is a story you've seen hundreds of times on other legal shows, almost always told with more style, and suggests a depressing formula for the show going forward where most of each episode is devoted to some bland standalone case, with little teases about Mitch's larger problems sprinkled in throughout.
(That's a formula that NBC's sister channel USA has mined quite effectively with shows like "Burn Notice," "White Collar," etc. All of those shows take themselves much less seriously than "The Firm," though, and the grim tone doesn't mesh particularly well with the disposable storytelling.)
As Mitch, Lucas is exactly what he's been in most of the movies that ultimately led to him starring in a TV show: solid, upright, handsome and largely forgettable. Like everything about "The Firm," he's not bad, but neither is he anything that will make setting a DVR season pass mandatory. I'm not sure if it's an indictment of Lucas, or simply a bad decision by the creative team, that the pilot climaxes with a big speech not by Mitch, but by the judge who had previously been lauding him.(*)
(*) The decision reminded me of another Grisham story: "A Time to Kill." In the book, the jury foreman gives a speech in which he lays out the brutal details of the crime and asks his fellow jurors to imagine that the young victim was white rather than black. When the movie was made, everyone involved recognized that viewers needed to hear that speech not from an extremely minor character, but from our defense lawyer hero, and the monologue went to Matthew McConnaughey.
Is there an audience so attached to "The Firm" brand name - 18 years after the movie, and 20 since the book was published - that they'll tune into any generic legal drama working under that title? Probably some, but not enough to make the new version a hit on its own. (The dismal performance of TNT's "Innocent" last month can't have given NBC a lot of confidence, even though the circumstances aren't exactly the same and Lucas was considered a movie star much more recently than Bill Pullman.) Brand names can sometimes help with awareness - or, in the case of "Prime Suspect," they can hurt your show among anyone who remembers the original - but ultimately you need a show that will stand up on its own merits and not on people's hazy memory of a story they enjoyed back when Amy Fisher was still a big deal.
And "The Firm" at this point doesn't offer much on its own.
Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
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About This Blog
All through his childhood, Alan Sepinwall's relatives told his parents, "All that boy does is watch television! How's he going to make a living doing that?" His career as a TV critic has been 15 years and counting of his attempt to answer their concerns. "What's Alan Watching" is a blog whose title is self-explanatory: Alan watches TV shows, then writes about what he watched. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
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Login or create a HitFix account Login SignupWar Chief Shake Zula
January 5, 2012 at 4:38PM EST Reply to CommentI think NBC has turned into the "spin-off network" because they think that's their key to a return to prominence.
Evidence seems that this is actually the path to their grave...
Chrissy
January 5, 2012 at 4:38PM EST Reply to CommentSomeone erred when they decided to cast Lucas in a sequel to the Cruise film rather than to the McConnaughey one. It would be like exact same guy replaces exact same guy. Sigh.
Marco My 13 year old son, immediately after Lucas came on screen said, "is that the guy from We Are Marshall?"
January 10, 2012 at 3:05PM ESTDonBoy
January 5, 2012 at 5:09PM EST Reply to CommentSome percentage might tune in because they think it's a butt-shaping video.
More seriously: I wonder if the two-hours-on-Sunday thing is related to the fact that NBC has 2 NFL playoff games Saturday, during which time I think they'll mention this show a couple times. "Tune in tomorrow, after the other playoff games are over" might be a better message than "come back five days from now".
Benjamin Kabak He's here all week folks!
January 6, 2012 at 12:19PM ESTJobin NBC doesn't have Sunday Night Football due to the playoffs, hence the very big hole in their Sunday night programming.
January 6, 2012 at 1:49PM ESTIt makes sense to promote something debuting on Sunday on Saturday during the football, but why wouldn't they just debut something that is going to stay on Sunday night?
Tune in, 5 days from now is simple.
Instead they went with:
Tune in tomorrow night, and then tune in 4 days from now weekly for when the show is really going to air.
BigTed
January 5, 2012 at 5:31PM EST Reply to CommentThe most compelling character in the movie was the deeply flawed but still sympathetic lawyer played by Gene Hackman. Sounds like there won't be an equivalent here... or anything that separates it from all the other legal dramas on TV.
Teklanika
January 5, 2012 at 5:37PM EST Reply to CommentI plan on checking The Firm out, but I'm not very excited now. Doesn't sound like it'll be around long anyway.
I'm excited about a Hannibal Lector type show. Great character with lots of rich material there, IMO. Of course, I'd feel better about a dark character like that if it were on a cable channel rather than the shallow, pop song-like style of network television.
Michael T
January 5, 2012 at 5:44PM EST Reply to CommentGood work, Alan. You found 2 of the Cylons in the Pilot.
troopermsu
January 5, 2012 at 5:50PM EST Reply to CommentI'm one of those "Firm" fans who will be tuning in just because. I've read the book four times and seen the movie at least 15 times. I was cautiously optimistic but Alan's review is a little depressing.
Funny how in neither the book nor the movie does the McDeere family enter the witness protection program.
If there was an updated Wilford Brimley character I'd like him to be played by J. K. Simmons.
Timm S
January 6, 2012 at 11:44AM EST Reply to CommentI loved Sydney Pollack's adaptation of Grisham's book. Very stylish and energetic (Tom Cruise RUNS!), with one of my favorite scores ever. Seems like they're going straight for the 35+ female audience, airing a pilot directly against the Cotton Bowl, and on a Friday night. Good luck, NBC. I do like Josh Lucas, though. Or, I feel in the middle. Can't figure why he elicits nothing in me making me want to watch him. He's the ultimate, "Hey, Josh Lucas is in this. Huh" guy for me.
Todd
January 6, 2012 at 1:28PM EST Reply to CommentThat's too bad that it's a sequel to the movie. I had actually seen the ads, and like you Alan, I figured it would make a cool series just to remake the original story with some updates and tweaking. They could easily find a different way for the Firm to be mysterious and dangerous, maybe even update it to tie it into the financial crisis somehow or something more topical. And it shouldn't be hard to make it interesting and suspenseful each week. But learning more about this new series just sounds lame. Boo NBC.
Jobin
January 6, 2012 at 1:38PM EST Reply to CommentAlan,
"he's now a champion for the little guy who takes on criminal defense cases and longshot civil suits."
Sounds like they really remade The Rainmaker, another John Grisham movie, staring Matt Damon. Though The Firm made 3x as much as The Rainmaker, The Rainmaker was still a really solid movie.
The ending of that movie pretty well setup a 10-year fast forward as well, since it was open ended where the Damon character was going next.
Hannah Lee
January 6, 2012 at 9:21PM EST Reply to Comment"who would be the 2011 equivalent of Wilford Brimley circa 1993?"
I don't know why, but the first person who came to mind was Bradley Whitford. Maybe it's the vague similarity in names, maybe it's his The Good Guys mustache, who knows? (and I suspect Mr. Whitford would not be happy with the comparision)
Dusting off the archives from your previous gig, Alan, I think the time has come for a new version of your idea of the "Similarity Score for Actors" to help out with these types of casting decisions. (I'd offered a President?Elf?Terrorist?-etc sequence years ago, but I think someone could do much better.)
Then again, maybe NBC could develop something similar, but instead of cataloguing actors, it could catalogue which old movies/tv shows should/should not be remade. That might help them avoid the Wonder Womans and Prime Suspects next development cycle.
Don J
January 8, 2012 at 7:02PM EST Reply to CommentAlan, you neglected to mention that NBC didn't develop this show. The Firm is produced & developed by Sony Pictures and Entertainment One and all the production costs were paid upfront by Sony and E1 pre-solid 22 episodes to several International territories before NBC even became involved with this show. NBC only paid a small licensing fee. So NBC's risk/investment in this show is very small.
Chris
January 10, 2012 at 8:41AM EST Reply to CommentAlan, I agree! Why not remake the book/movie story with a young McDeere right out of Harvard and focus on his slow realization that the mob is in control? The DeVasher role could have given a good actor something to do. There could have at least been something for character development in that regard instead of this dumb "groundhog day" approach.
Personally, I will avoid this dreck at all costs.