Zivilprozeß

John Travolta gives a dandy performance as a cocky Boston personal injury lawyer who heads up a small but burgeoning firm, almost passing up on headline-making case of a major food company subsidiary found to be dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply of a small-town Massachusettes town, causing many of the children there to get sick or die. Neatly directed and scripted film from Jonathan Harr's factual book allows for both legal statistics and some dry legal humor, and avoids exploiting an emotionally-wrenching theme (the death of children) for hug-tugging sentiment. The film is direct and compact, pausing only occasionally for a dramatic character turn, and is handsomely-made if not terrifically entertaining. Travolta and nemesis lawyer Robert Duvall (smiling like the Cheshire Cat) are wonderful to watch sparring with one another, and the specifics of the case are intriguing. **1/2 from ****

I'm usually put off by courtroom films simply because I associate them with either the tendency for pompous and ornate speech-making a la "A Few Good Men," or cheap audience-manipulation a la "Primal Fear." Yes, they are entertaining, usually with great actors and fine performances - thinking man's thrillers. But generally they remain nothing more than that - a well-done conversation piece.

"A Civil Action" was a pleasant surprise because it is not only like neither of those films, but also because it is a good film starring John Travolta. While he had his moments in the spotlight for good reason (think: "Pulp Fiction") his movies are generally not that great. But that's just a personal opinion and I may be wrong.

Still, "A Civil Action" is a great courtroom film. For one, it's a true story (which doesn't necessarily say much), and it is told with restraint, quietness and respect for the characters involved (which should be saying a lot). It takes the best from "Silkwood" and "Verdict" and it gives us people who are real and who engage in battle the way we imagine real people would. They don't have dramatic moments in the courtroom upon which an unreal stillness descends so as to be shattered at the end of the speech by the thunderous sound of unanimous, emotionally-fraught clapping.

John Travolta is great here and so is the rest of the cast, among them William H. Macy, Kathleen Quinlan, Sydney Pollack, John Lithgow, Stephen Fry (in a small cameo role), Kathy Bates (in an even smaller cameo role) and the great Robert Duvall. In the end, it is Duvall who steals the show in his quiet, unemotional musings, advice-givings and deliberations with Travolta. He embodies the restraint for which the film strives.

"A Civil Action" is quiet in its proceedings and, consequently real. It tells the story of a lawyer who reluctantly accepts a case having to do with the contamination of water and the deaths of many children in a small town and becomes obsessed with it to the point of going bankrupt. His obsession mirrors the self-destructiveness of Paul Newman's lawyer in "Verdict," and it has real results. His adversaries are not evil people, per se (think Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men"), but people who are simply doing their jobs damn well, defending their interests. We shouldn't expect them to cave in to pretty speech-making, nor should the jury.

And watching "A Civil Action" we don't and it doesn't. The personalities clash, personal tragedy is pitted against financial burdens of the legal process, and it yields startling conclusions about the American Justice system. And that is what "A Civil Action" chooses to focus on more so than the true story it tells (though it doesn't ignore it either). The film shows the price of justice and how justice is understood in the legal process. In fact, it draws a very fine dichotomy between non-legal justice and legal justice and shows how hard it is to get "justice" in a legal setting. Needless to say, it becomes a very expensive ordeal full of re-interpretations of the law and annoying manipulations of it. What we can gather from the story, however, is that we should be grateful for people who are willing to go to extreme lengths, at great personal cost, to define justice on their own terms and to fight for it.

On my first viewing of this, on VHS, I thought it okay but nothing special. I caught a break, being able to obtain the DVD for almost no cost, so I looked at it again. Wow, am I glad. I loved it the second time.

The DVD brings out the cinematography which is very, very good and the picture is razor-sharp. One of Hollywood''s Hall Of Fame photographers, Conrad Hall, shot this film. Story-wise, the courtroom scenes were the most dramatic of the film but this story dealt more with the behind-the-scenes digging of information to expose thoughtless businessmen who had dumped poison in an area and people were suffering because of it. It is supposedly-based on a true story.

Another big highlight of this movie is great performance by John Travolta, perhaps his best work ever. Just the pauses and looks on his face alone greatly enhanced his performance. He was just fascinating. Language-wise, this is pretty tame except for William H. Macy, who loses his cool a few times as the assistant lawyer/financial man for the law firm battling the polluters.

It's easy to get involved with the story, but don't overlook the great photography in here.

John Travolta gives a pretty good performance here in Steve Zaillan's (scripter of Schindler's List) Civil Action as a hot shot lawyer who gets a case of people in a small town poisoned by the local water. Then the lawsuit begins, though we learn more here than any Grisham film. A film about being humane and trying to do the right thing over money. The entire supporting cast is a big boost, including Robert Duvall as the opposing attorney, William H. Macy, Tony Shalhoub as Travolta's attorney's, Kathleen Quinlann who is the heart of the movie and James Gandolfini as a resident. A

Any movie with John Travolta, James Gandolfini, Robert Duvall, and John Lithgow in it has to be good. This was a top-notch legal drama based on a true story with Travolta (in a standout performance) as a lawyer whose firm has to do representation in an environmental case. They handle it brilliantly. It starts off with a monologue presented by Travolta's character about the "worthiness" of clients, shows a case, and proceeds from there. I liked Travolta's role and Lithgow's performance as a judge, as well as everyone else in it and the entire movie in general. This was one of those must-see, feel-good movies that everyone is guaranteed to love.

*** out of ****