User Reviews

In movies, the good guys always seem to win court cases. Over an ingratiating orchestra swell, no less. But in reality, good or bad has nothing to do with the outcome of court cases. It's how you play the game. If you can afford to be in the game in the first place.

A CIVIL ACTION is based on a real life Massachusetts court case, novelized by Jonathan Harr, about a group of families suing two factories in their Woburn locale, accusing them of polluting the town water supply and causing the leukemia deaths of their children. The factories were owned by corporations, and though a settlement was reached, even as the pittance was being paid out, it broke the back of the lawyer who represented the families and destroyed the spirits of the already-shattered families.

John Travolta is lawyer Jan Schlichtmann, who informs us during the opening credits that a lawyer would be doing his clients a disservice were he to get emotionally involved with their case. Then for dramatic arc, and in real life it would seem, Jan went against his own principles and tongue-kissed the case to bed every night and woke with its morning breath in his nostrils every day.

Robert Duvall is veteran lawyer Jerome Facher, his doddering, distracted persona disguising a clinical tactician who outplays Jan at every step of the game precisely because he is not emotionally involved. And has no desire to unearth any ethics or truth in the case. When Jan tells him that the families he represents want the truth about the contaminated water, Facher replies amusedly, "Are we talking about a court of law? A court isn't the place to find the truth... This case stopped being about dead children the minute it entered the justice system, the minute you filed the case."

William H. Macy is Jan's accountant, who helplessly watches the firm go broke against his desperate mortgaging of all their homes as collateral and selling all their office furniture; Tony Shalhoub and Zeljko Ivanek are Jan's snowed under assistants.

John Lithgow is the forceful, biased judge, who plays golf with Facher. From the outset, Jan is battling the judge's tripwire impatience as the new guy intruding into this Old Boys' Club.

Kathleen Quinlan heads the group of families suing for the truth (one of her sons is dead), and James Gandolfini (THE SOPRANOS would appear literally on the heels of this movie and change his career forever) is a factory worker who harbors damning secrets about the dumping of waste chemicals. In his words - presaging the credo of what would become his most enduring character - "I ain't a rat!"

Jan tell us: "Odds of a plaintiff's lawyer winning in civil court are two to one against. Your odds of surviving a game of Russian Roulette are better than winning a case at trial. So why does anyone do it? They don't. They settle. …only fools with something to prove end up ensnared in it. And when I say 'prove' I don't mean about the case, I mean about themselves."

In most movies, an eleventh hour revelation drives the Good Guys towards home plate, victory, and that annoying orchestra swell, but in A CIVIL ACTION, even as Jan uncovers damning evidence that would enable him to appeal the case, with an elusive eleventh hour witness, there is no money left for "justice" to be served. And "the law" - ironically - stands in the way: the long standing principle of res judicata, "that a matter once decided in a court of law remains decided - even if that decision flew in the face of reality."

Co-written and directed by Steven Zaillian, co-produced by Robert Redford (always into "sensible" films with something to say), A CIVIL ACTION is a success as a movie precisely because it is such a major downer. It conveys an infuriating claustrophobia, that maddening feeling that we can't, in fact, fight City Hall, no matter what Greg Brady says.

Schlichtmann becomes a shell of a man, obsessed with trying to do the right thing, sitting in his bare office with no desk, phones and electricity cut off and no future prospects. And it's raining outside.

A late scene shows young punks throwing firecrackers across a river on the contaminated land; one of the firecrackers lands in the river and the whole river catches alight.

Movie ends with the Environmental Protection Agency getting involved - one giant institution against another; a clash of the Titans, if you will. In Greek mythology, only a Titan could destroy another Titan; and in the modern obfuscating world of blind justice - does anyone see the irony in that phrase? - it is still impossible for an individual to destroy a Titan, even with the best intentions and the Truth on their side.

Harr's book ends on a somber, pessimistic note, but the movie was made after the book, with more current information. Closing text informs us that the two offending corps, Grace and Beatrice Foods, were indicted by the EPA and paid 69 million dollars in cleanup costs. Jan is now representing 60 families in New Jersey in another contaminated water case.

Is this guy a sucker for punishment or what?

SPOILERS.

Actually this is a pretty well-done movie about environmental law. There have been quite a few of them around over the last decade or so but this is one of the better ones. It follows the usual configuration -- the lone hero beginning as a materialist and contracting a bad case of ideals, making sacrifices, risking everything. But in this case it's an entire law firm instead of just one guy, and basically they lose the case.

John Travolta, ably supported by Bill Macy and others, is Jan Schlichtmann, a "personal injury lawyer" (we know what that means) is approached by a woman who, along with eight others in Woburn, have lost children because the drinking water was polluted with toxic waste. He is sympathetic but he demurs, seeing an expensive case from which he will profit only if he wins, and no money in the pockets of the guy who owns the polluting tannery. Then he discovers that the land is owned by W. R. Grace and Beatrice, two mega giant corporations. Between them they own every brand name you can think of. They own Heinz ketchup. Travolta can think of 57 different ways of squeezing $150 million out of them. The scent of pelf sets Travolta's Darwinian points aquiver.

But, as they say, pride goeth before a fall. The salivating Travolta brings suit and is opposed by Robert Duvall, playing Jerry Facher. (All of these are real people with real names.) The movie doesn't give Travolta an obvious flaw like Paul Newman's disillusioned alcoholism in "The Verdict," but it doesn't hagiographize him either. He has more guts than brains. He gets caught with his pants down a few times when he makes courtroom errors that Facher is teaching his Harvard law students are elementary. ("Never ask a witness why, unless you already know the answer." You can learn that from watching Perry Mason.) This Facher is pretty quick on his feet and he clobbers Travolta's character, all the while smiling politely, seemingly distracted, fiddling with pens, wrapping a string absent-minded around the fraying handle of his ancient briefcase. It's a very good performance.

Travolta is good too. We never know how serious he is about his motives, or whether he has any idea what they are. He stares ahead and speaks sternly of "eight dead children" and "looking for justice", but at a formal meeting with the two mega giant's lawyers he makes such impossible financial demands that they walk out on him -- and he never discussed his plans with his partners.

While the jury is out, Duvall offers him TWENTY million bucks to settle and Travolta oozes dignity as he rips up the offer and tosses it in the trash, to Duvall's amusement. Well, he may seem like Gary Cooper in "High Noon," but when you come right down to it he, like Cooper, is playacting. What happened to the interests of his clients? Heroic gestures in the pursuit of self-aggrandizement aren't going to help the families of those "dead children" living up there in Nowheresville. Stripped of the frame the film tries to give him -- a selfish man who discovers he has ideals -- Schlichtmann becomes not just an ambulance chaser but an ambulance chaser who overreached.

In the end Travolta's firm, largely because of his own intransigence, sees the suit against Beatrice thrown out and has to settle for eight million from W. R. Grace. The meeting between Travolta and Sidney Pollack, playing Grace's representative, is hilarious. Travolta walks into the Harvard Club to meet Pollack, carrying a bundle of facts, all business and formality. But Pollack, like Duval, is way ahead of him in every regard. Man, has Pollack got "condescension" down pat. Pollack: "What kind of Harvard man are you?" Travolta: "The Cornell kind." Pollack: "You didn't go to Harvard? Somebody told me you went to Harvard. Don't get me wrong, Cornell's a fine school. (Pause) A damned good school."

In the end, Travolta goes back to personal injury cases, his partners split, and he declares bankruptcy (after a two-year vacation -- in Hawaii, which the movie omits). He devotes a lot of personal time to digging up new evidence but has no resources to pursue leads, so he turns the case over to the Environmental Protection Agency, which finds merit in it, convicts the corporations' lawyers of various offenses, and levies fines against them while a heavenly choir rises in the background and there is the sound of Sox fans cheering.

That was in, what, 1988? I wonder if the EPA would be so zealous today. Here's an assessment of the present administrator from the organization Earthjustice, a prominent, respectable legal organization. "Governor Leavitt's appointment to head the EPA puts an anti-environmental politician in charge of regulating industries that pollute the nation's air and water," said Earthjustice Denver attorney Jim Angell. "We know from his history on environmental issues in Utah that his preferred method is to exclude the broader public from the process when he wants to make decisions that could harm the environment."

Of course it's good that the corporate giants were made to pay, even if the amount was the equivalent of a licensure fee. And no need to feel too sorry for Jan Schlichtmann. A book about the case made him famous, and this movie made him even MORE famous -- and rich too. He now lives in the exclusive mansion-besotted suburb of Beverly, Mass.

It's quite a good movie. Yes, there's a lot of ambiguity to be found in it, if you don't simply accept it as a Manichaean struggle between black and white, but in that respect it resembles real life, which is rarely anything other than fuzzy.

First of all, if you want a rehash of the plot, go read another review. This is a great movie. It's not your typical courtroom drama, but more of a legal drama. And it's a bit more realistic than what we're used to on the screen (but only a little), and some don't feel comfortable with stories told like it was. (The reason I say 'a little' is because I used to work for lawyers and I can't see any of those guys going that far out on a limb for a case.) But this was a true story and the filmmakers really stuck to the truth. It doesn't have the usual courtroom scenes, yet it still depicts what a hellish, slippery slope (and costly one) it is to win justice for your client in the only venue permitted: a court of law. I don't believe there's ever been a film that's told this story quite this way before.

I always wondered why our protagonist in the film (that's Jan) took the case in the first place. I always assumed it was forced on him, but don't know where that came from. (I'll probably have to look it up in the book since I don't own the movie.) If it was voluntary, he had to have seen dollar signs in it somewhere. But I don't know because Jan doesn't know. He doesn't even remember the case, let alone why he took it. He sure doesn't remember Anne Anderson when she calls him on the air of a radio show, and asks him why he doesn't return his client's phone calls, which makes him look, sound, and feel like a real jerk.

And exactly when he realized Beatrice Foods was Granddaddy to a plethora of stuff that America consumes daily, that's fuzzy too. It's after he's been humiliated on the radio that we see he's got the file and talking to one of his partners about Beatrice Foods' deep pockets. And his partner (I think it was Macy) tells him that kind of case is just a "black hole" and he should get rid of it. So he goes out to Woburn to meet with the families for the first time (he's had the case 2 years!) supposedly to get rid of them.

But after hearing their stories, he can't do it. He's too much of a coward. I also think he's embarrassed by their unbelievable loss and suffering; maybe he feels somewhat sorry for them. But I really believe that the increasing obsession he soon develops over securing the highest number he can for his clients isn't due to a sudden awakening of conscience, or a heart burgeoning with pity, which is what it looks like on the outside. But there's been no character change yet. His anger grows, but it has little to do with the crimes committed by the big corporations against his clients. What really jerks his chain more than anything at this point are those pompous defense attorneys; how they act and how they treat him makes him furious. He's consumed with beating them down and knocking them out of the game for good really because of hurt pride.

Jan Schlictman is no hero. One reviewer aptly wrote that he had "feet of clay." He's a hot-shot. I wouldn't say he "loves the law;" I would say he loves having knowledge of the law which allows him to manipulate it, and that gives him power. He doesn't appear to respect the law. We see him getting a speeding ticket on the way to Woburn, and again — from the same cop — on the way back. As he takes the ticket and insolently slams it into his glove compartment that's just teeming with others, he resembles a rebellious teenager. And the filmmakers made sure to show us that early in the film.

In my opinion, his character starts to change ― and here comes a spoiler ― the moment near the end when he picks up Grace's number off the floor. (That part always kills me!) His partners have read him the riot act and walked out on him. He's sitting on the floor, his body slumped over the phone as he picks it up and dials. His body language reflects utter despair. Note: To those who get bored when there's not enough action, and/or can't tell what's happening with a character because there's no dialog to explain, learn to read the actor's body language. If he or she is an above-average actor, (and you are somewhat intelligent), you should be able to get it.

As for Oscar nominations, for once I can see why the Academy didn't nominate Travolta for his acting here. I compared this performance with Travolta's take on Tony Manero in "Saturday Night Fever," and again with Vincent Vega in "Pulp Fiction." For me, it just doesn't compare. He's not that skillful at the underplaying thing. Robert Duvall's nomination didn't surprise me.

Having read the book, I thought the writers accomplished the ending fairly well, even if they omitted a heck of a lot from the book's ending. (It seems to me the families actually did get to testify, but I could be wrong.) There are too many movies that are dumb, pointless, predictable, and a waste of two hours, with too few being clever, absorbing, stimulating, and different. I can never pass this up whenever it's on. But it bores most of my friends, too— probably for the same reasons others have stated — no action, no high drama. Also, Travolta underplays his performance for the most part, (which allows Duvall all that scene-stealing) and I think that was an excellent decision for that role, whose ever it was. And whenever an actor does that, sometimes people don't get it; they think nothing's going on, that the star is holding back. Trust me, they did this one right.