Having cringed through the false sentiments of "A Time to Kill" and the obvious obnoxious message sending of "Runaway Jury" I was ready for another exercise in frustration when I caught this on AMC last night. This must be a pretty good film if I could sit through endless commercials for Enzyte, the male enhancer, and some kind of Charles Bronson film festival to be showing soon, and come back to the film, which as with most movies on AMC did not take up quite where it left off.
Travolta was made to play a negligence lawyer. He reminded me of Ricky S, a man who shared my offices back in the '80s and who followed the Travolta dictum to the max. All of Ricky's cases were settled on the telephone. I liked the way he talked before he thought; he exuded that confidence that such men have to have to do their jobs, and when he realized what he missed in the spilling of the glass of water, he took it as a new learning experience to add to his arsenal.
Duvall was his customary excellent self; we have seen him play this role so many times, but it could have been filled by Gene Hackman also. I think Duvall can mail these parts in. I am not being negative either.
I did not realize that William Macy's character's LAST name was Gordon. I liked the way the storyteller did not cut to scene's showing Travolta's associates doubts about what he was doing, but let us draw our own conclusions, and I cheered when the writers and directors did not tack on a "The Natural" ending by having Travolta hit a home run in the courtroom.
Then there was Gandolfini: he could have been sitting down with AJ, Meadow and Carmella at the dinner table. Same facial expressions, same little tics, same inflections in his voice, yet he was real.
One little inaccuracy came when Travolta sat down with Pollack in the Harvard Club. Pollack asks, "Well, what do you want" and Travolta pulls out what seems to be a settlement offer. Pollack admonishes him that business is not done in the club......but later in his office, when essentially Pollack asks the same 'what do you want' question, Travolta fires back that he does not want to negotiate against himself, the correct tactic. So why was he going to put his cards on the table earlier? Good film, worth a night of AMC
Travolta was made to play a negligence lawyer. He reminded me of Ricky S, a man who shared my offices back in the '80s and who followed the Travolta dictum to the max. All of Ricky's cases were settled on the telephone. I liked the way he talked before he thought; he exuded that confidence that such men have to have to do their jobs, and when he realized what he missed in the spilling of the glass of water, he took it as a new learning experience to add to his arsenal.
Duvall was his customary excellent self; we have seen him play this role so many times, but it could have been filled by Gene Hackman also. I think Duvall can mail these parts in. I am not being negative either.
I did not realize that William Macy's character's LAST name was Gordon. I liked the way the storyteller did not cut to scene's showing Travolta's associates doubts about what he was doing, but let us draw our own conclusions, and I cheered when the writers and directors did not tack on a "The Natural" ending by having Travolta hit a home run in the courtroom.
Then there was Gandolfini: he could have been sitting down with AJ, Meadow and Carmella at the dinner table. Same facial expressions, same little tics, same inflections in his voice, yet he was real.
One little inaccuracy came when Travolta sat down with Pollack in the Harvard Club. Pollack asks, "Well, what do you want" and Travolta pulls out what seems to be a settlement offer. Pollack admonishes him that business is not done in the club......but later in his office, when essentially Pollack asks the same 'what do you want' question, Travolta fires back that he does not want to negotiate against himself, the correct tactic. So why was he going to put his cards on the table earlier? Good film, worth a night of AMC