A Civil Action (1998)
Average Rating: 6.3/10
Reviews Counted: 67
Fresh: 40 | Rotten: 27
Intelligent and unconventional.
Average Rating: 5.6/10
Critic Reviews: 15
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 8
Intelligent and unconventional.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 20,890
My Rating
Movie Info
Directed by Schindler's List screenwriter Steve Zaillian, this courtroom drama is based on a true story and non-fiction book by Jonathan Harr. The case revolves around an incident in 1979 in East Woburn, MA, where two drinking wells supplying water to the town were found to be contaminated with industrial solvents. When toxic waste was discovered later that year, suspicions arose that the local factories caused the pollution. The residents felt these companies were responsible for the unusually
Dec 25, 1998 Wide
Jul 13, 1999
Touchstone
Cast
-
John Travolta
Jan Schlichtmann -
Robert Duvall
Jerome Facher -
Tony Shalhoub
Kevin Conway -
William H. Macy
James Gordon -
Zeljko Ivanek
Bill Crowley -
Bruce Norris
William Cheeseman -
John Lithgow
Judge Skinner -
Kathleen Quinlan
Anne Anderson -
Peter Jacobson
Neil Jacobs -
Sydney Pollack
Al Eustis -
Kathy Bates
Judge (uncredited) -
James Gandolfini
Al Love
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All Critics (69) | Top Critics (15) | Fresh (42) | Rotten (27) | DVD (10)
Based on a true story, this is an intelligent legal thriller, very much in the mode of 1970s issue-oriented films, that may be too subtle and complex for the damands of today's market.
Delivering the verdict two thirds into the movie is anti-climactic, while Schlichtmann's belated atonement feels beside the point.
Top CriticAs proficient a job as writer-director Steve Zaillian and his team do, A Civil Action has unmistakably unraveled by its close.
A slick, shameless job that takes way too long to make its point (namely, we need the EPA).
Like John Grisham for grownups.
Schlichtmann may have gone through this conversion in real life, but I just didn't buy it the way Zaillian presents it.
This is a case in which the material really is better served in book form.
The movie becomes one more David-and-Goliath morality play.
While Travolta is passable as Schlichtmann, it is the outstanding work from Duvall, Macy and briefly Tony Shalhoub that drive the story.
I expected a harder hitting indictment against the uncaring power of corporate America. Instead, we get a middlin' courtroom drama that lacks the intensity of such films as the 1982 Sidney Lumet/Paul Newman film, The Verdict.
the film is slightly overlong and the ending is anti-cathartic.
... hints at the complex moral issues that vein the story.
A legal drama that doesn't follow the usual Hollywood-John Grisham formula.
neatly avoids slipping into melodrama, and despite plenty of niggling minor faults along the way the movie finally succeeds. With a more comfortably cast lead actor it could have been even more powerful.
The film is so daring because it features a protagonist that we cannot and do not sympathize with.
My only real problem is with the script.
More complex, subtle, perplexing and memorable than the usual courtroom theatrics.
It's not bad, but with everything else out there, I won't recommend it.
Just when it seemed the courtroom drama was suffering a fatal case of John Grisham, A Civil Action" rescues the genre.
Though the plot plays largely by the numbers, Zaillian treats the material with a welcome level of maturity that manages to sustain interest even when the storyline doesn't.
Audience Reviews for A Civil Action
Super Reviewer
A group of parents, whose children have died via pollution, enlist Jan Schlichtmann (John Travolta), a hot-shot ambulance chasing lawyer to fight their case against two huge corporations. But Schlichtmann soon realises that he may have met his match in opposing lawyer, Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), with defeat possibly spelling financial ruin for him and his firm.
This was only Zaillain's second film behind the camera and although there's much to admire, he still has much to learn. The problem he has, is with the pace. It was the same mistake he made later with his star studded "All the Kings Men". He has amassed an abundance of quality actors fleshed them out with substantial characterisations, yet they don't get a chance to shine. There is too much legal jargon going on for any of them to leap to the forefront. Duvall and Travolta duel with the viewers delight but the impressive supporting ensemble are wasted. Still, it's a cut above a John Grisham adaptation and if you don't mind a bit of legal mumbo jumbo and consider yourself a fan of slow talking legal drama's, then this will certainly appeal.
Based on a true story and treads a similiar path that "Erin Brockovich" would tread a couple of years later. I'd have to say that the Steven Soderbergh/Julia Roberts film is the better of the two though.
Super Reviewer
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