Paramount Home Media Distribution released a 4k Blu-ray upgrade of The Firm (1993) on June 20, 2023. The 30th Anniversary edition includes a 4k Blu-ray and a code to redeem a Digital Copy via paramountmovies.com.
Sydney Pollack, as eclectic a director as they come, serves up the material with some of the intensity of his classic Three Days of the Condor while never allowing style to get in the way of substance. If anything, The Firm is a throwback, and really bridges the gap, between the traditional Hollywood way of shooting a thriller and the MTV-style of fast editing so beloved by directors like Tony Scott… where it’s less about the substance, and more about the style of being chased endlessly (with lots of explosions of course). Whereas in today’s thrillers a handheld camera whirls non-stop to capture action while editors attempt to make sense of it all for the audience, here the camera is at the service of the story and characters.
Unfortunately, the new 4k Blu-ray edition of The Firm is even more bare-bones than the previous Blu-rays (that offered a couple of trailers), but what the disc edition lacks in extras it makes up for in image quality. On 4k Blu-ray, The Firm is presented in 2160p at 1.78:1 aspect ratio. High Dynamic Range formats include Dolby Vision and HDR10. The new remaster offers a much higher-quality image with sharpness improvements throughout. Shadow areas reveal a good amount of detail not seen before. And, the color is deeper with Dolby Vision. Color grading is also more realistic than previous Blu-rays that leaned toward the warm side with whites often muddied by yellow or cyan casts.
On 4k Blu-ray the soundtrack is offered the same English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack as the first Blu-ray released in 2011. Subtitles are provided in English, English SDH, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. The disc sounds pretty darn good, with the action playing out over multiple channels, but without much in the way of back-channel ambiance. Dialogue sounds nice and clear from the center and front channels.
Read a full review of The Firm on 4k Ultra HD Blu-ray.
