THE FIRM (Directed by Sydney Pollack. Starring Tom Cruise, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Holly Hunter, Gary Busey)

THE LEGAL profession has been good for Tom Cruise. His portrayal of a hot shot lawyer in A Few Good Men restored his faltering box office credibility after the relative failure of Far And Away. Audiences who apparently found it hard to accept the All American Boy as a turn of the century Irish farm labourer flocked in droves to see him as a Navy Attorney who played baseball while dreaming up inventive new defences. At least as a lawyer it was easy to imagine that he could actually afford the kind of dental health care plan required to keep that million dollar smile in full working order.

With The Firm he continues in the legal profession, and returns the favour. What should be a paranoid thriller that takes a jaundiced look at the law is transformed by his presence into a standard Tom Cruise vehicle. He is - naturally - the best and the brightest of America's latest batch of law school graduates. Recruited by a mid-west law firm who shower him in gifts (new Mercedes, mortgage for a luxury home, student loans paid off) he begins to suspect sinister motives behind their largesse but must overcome the sins of his past - pride, as usual, this time relating to a brother behind bars - before he can triumph over adversity.

Director Sydney Pollack, who is old enough to know better, blows all credibility early on when Cruise, after watching a young black street urchin performing some inspired acrobatics, puts aside his legal briefs for a moment to join him in a bout of flips and somersaults. For all its supposed criticism of Yuppie values and immoral legal representatives, it might as well be Top Lawyer Part Two. Sure most of the other lawyers in the film are venal and corrupt but who cares when Tom Cruise is your role model, a man so handsome, athletic and brilliant he could run rings around the legal system both literally and figuratively?

The fact that this is not so much a performance as an ego boost could be forgiven if The Firm delivered equally pyrotechnical thrills and spills. Unfortunately it is extremely long and dull, with a convoluted plot only a tax lawyer could follow and about as much mounting tension as your average deposition. Despite glossy appearances and a plethora of well-turned supporting performances The Firm verges on the flabby.

That it has already taken $150 million at the American box office is a testament to its leading man, Hollywood's own Cruise missile, devastating box offices with a flash of his toothy grin. The powers that be at Paramount have rewarded him, like the character he plays, with the present of a Mercedes, which, apparently not having learned the film's supposed lesson - look a gift horse square in the eye - he has accepted. The public are likely to respond the same way, reinterpreting author John Grisham's paranoid vision of the legal profession as a recruitment advertisement.

With the possibility of being married to a beautiful model, owning a Merc and performing acrobatics on the way to court, expect a flood of applications to law school this year.