Product Description

The true story of an epic courtroom showdown in which two corporations stand accused of causing the deaths of children. Representing the parents is a young flamboyant lawyer who hopes to win millions, but he ends up losing nearly everything, including his sanity.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 2-APR-2002
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8046 in DVD
• Brand: TRAVOLTA,JOHN
• Released on: 1999-07-13
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 115 minutes

Amazon.com
Jonathan Harr's nonfiction bestseller was a shot in the arm for those seeking more than last-minute heroics akin to a John Grisham thriller. Here was a labyrinthine case involving industrial pollution by two highly regarded corporations, contaminated drinking water, and the deaths of innocent children in New England, circa 1981. The case has hundreds of twists and takes our hero--a steady, respectable lawyer named Jan Schlichtmann--and turns his life into personal disaster. Instead of celebrating the law, the story is a maddening and rewarding look at the elusiveness of the courtroom case.

Steven Zaillian, who won an Oscar for adapting Schindler's List and directed Searching for Bobby Fischer, boils Harr's 502-page book into a complete, satisfactory film experience. Book readers will no doubt jeer the streamlining Zaillian had to perform to make the movie flow. Most changes can be quickly defused with the exception of the film's portrait of Schlichtmann. The lawyer has been turned into a movie star, an ultra-slick, cold-hearted gentleman who finds his purpose in working the case. Casting a stalwart John Travolta again diverges from the book, which right from the opening pages showed us a Schlichtmann with feet of clay. As Schlichtmann's partners (including William H. Macy and Tony Shalhoub) descend into the case, the unbridled sense of power and money is abandoned. This case is ultimately about survival.

Zaillian provides an excellent narrative for the sordid facts of personal injury suits, in which money is the only reward for lost or broken lives (deftly introduced in the film's opening scene). Zaillian also stays away from dwelling on the illness of the children involved, focusing on the gaunt faces of the parents who survive (Kathleen Quinlan, James Gandolfini) in controlled anguish. His evil characters--an industrial plant's owner (Dan Hedaya) and a corporate lawyer (another fine acting spin by director Sydney Pollack)--are so human it's terrifying. Zaillian's final ace in the hole is Oscar-nominee Robert Duvall. Perfectly cast as Travolta's opposition, Jerome Facher, Duvall steals scenes with the abbreviated dialogue; he turns a fancy settlement meeting into a farce with one line. Facher is not a callous, love-to-hate-him lawyer like James Mason in The Verdict. Facher represents the law at its brilliant foundation: to best represent one's client. With a taped-together briefcase and dry humor, Facher, not Schlichtmann, is the character who captures us by the film's end. --Doug Thomas

From The New Yorker
Yet another movie about the redemption of a lawyer. Swathed in double-breasted Italian suits, Jan Schlichtmann (John Travolta), a flashy Boston ambulance chaser, gets caught up in a working-class town's battle with two large corporations that may have polluted their water and caused several deaths. Obsessed, Schlichtmann loses his professional judgment and sacrifices everything to the case. That the story is true (and based on an expertly written book by Jonathan Harr) doesn't make "A Civil Action" any more satisfying dramatically-there's a streak of obviousness in the moral melodrama that dampens one's interest. Robert Duvall gives a witty performance as a seemingly preoccupied and eccentric but actually devastatingly effective litigator; unfortunately, the big confrontation between Duvall and Travolta which the entire movie seems headed for never materializes. Written and directed by Steven Zaillian. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Solid Flick with very pertinent material despite its age.
As a former resident of the Greater Boston area this was a film that evoked memories on a number of levels. The investigations of cancer clusters and their relationship to EPA Super Fund Sites is still something that should be coordinated. Moving film with solid performances.The follow up to the story is perhaps more hopeful. The sites have been cleaned and are being utilized! Despite the irepairable damage done to these families America can heal itself via the tenacious actions of its citizen/victims and the scar tissue shoud be a reminder as to the dangerous and destructive nature of unmonitored business interests.

A tort lawyer finds new meaning in life and goes down the path of righteous litigation; An underdog against the large corp
(1) A Civil Action is a 1998 film, starring John Travolta (as plaintiff's attorney Jan Schlichtmann) and Robert Duvall, based on the book of the same name by Jonathan Harr. Both the book and the film are based on the real-life case of Anderson v. Cryovac that took place in Woburn, Massachusetts in the 1980s.

(2) John Travolta plays a tort lawyer part of tort law firm making millions from large corporations by filing personal injuries on behalf of their clients.

(3) He is intellectually attracted (seeing the the financial jackpot and oppurtunity to make millions for his firm and partners) to a case about a large corporation polluting the waters of a small town which incidentally shows a high rise of deaths due to cancer.

(4) Travolta law firm tries to proove that the deaths due the cancer of the many residents of that down were actually due to the consumption of the water from the river where the toxic waste from the company were dumped.

(5) In a surprising move , and totally against his nature he decides against taking a reasonably sizable sum of money as settlement (from the corporation) on behalf of the town dwellers to end the case there which would have left Travolta and his partners with sizable monies and would have also left his clients some money. But the clients are not after money, they are after truth and want justice to be served against the large corporation.

(6) The culprit in question are actually 2 companies of which Robert Duvall is the attorney for one of the companies.

(6) Having turned down the offer and having decided to go on the righteous route of litigations for justice and truth, he sinks his whole law firm into bankruptcy fighting the case; His partners leave him (one of whom is William H Macy)

(7) ' An underdog against the large corporation' film

I won't call it the best legal thriller of our times like the DVD jacket proclaims, but it is certainly an above par legal thriller churned out of Hollywood. Travolta surprisingly suits the role very well.


regards, Vikram

A page turner
A heart wrenching page turner! You will root for this guy all along. You will bite your nails, become invested and get your heart broken.

Don't bother renting the movie.