"In the words of Calvin Harris It was acceptable in the 80's""

Wow.  That wasn't half a blast from the past!  Shell suits - check.  Bowl haircuts - check.  Cheesy music - well that's a full-blown guarantee!  If there's one thing that this film does, it completely transports you back to the 1980's.  The authenticity of this film is without doubt - from the title sequence with its neon lights to theme music, ‘The Firm' is impeccable in its attention to detail.

What a lucky thing therefore, that I wasn't a London football fan during the 1980's.  The violence that ‘The Firm' portrays is nothing short of terrifying.  From baseball bats to knives, angry phone calls to full blown riots, ‘The Firm' portrays what life must have been like at the dodgy end of English football - and it's somewhere that I am most grateful I never had the misfortune to be.

It's a bit of a shame that the rest of the film doesn't live up to the dedication previously mentioned.  It's pretty much a paint by numbers rehash of a story that has been told a hundred times before - impressionable young lad falls in with the wrong crowd.  Aforementioned young lad hero worships ring leader of wrong crowd.  Ringleader of wrong crowd falls from grace (in this instance dies).  Young lad goes back to being a young lad.

Other than that -  not a lot happens in the film.  There are some convincing performances, but I just didn't feel that the cast were given enough material to get their teeth into - a few fights with a bit of filler and we're done.

All in all ‘The Firm' really isn't a bad film - the attention to detail superb, the acting strong.  It's just a shame that there isn't more of it, from a plot perspective, to really get stuck into.