Is the legal system just ice?
A Civil Action A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1999 By MIchael Redman
*** (Out of ****)
A very rare number of people, at very rare times, are living their everyday lives when they meet God on the road to Damascus. They're going to work. They're shopping for groceries. They're paying bills. Suddenly there's a blinding light and their reality changes completely.
They experience something that triggers a transformation in the way they view the world. Old perceptions are out the window and a new way of being takes over. Their previous life vanishes as a new passion overwhelms all.
Boston ambulance chaser Jan Schlichtmann (John Travolta) has his revelation on the road to Woburn. Stopped for his second speeding ticket on the same bridge on the same day, Jan glances out on the Aberjona River and soon everything is different.
The attorney is a high profile personal injury lawyer. Named one of the ten most eligible bachelors in the city, he dresses sharp and aims for the jugular. With his eye on the financial prize, he has reduced his clients to dollar signs.
He wheels a crippled man down the courtroom hall and his voice-over explains the worth of a human being in the civil legal system. A living man is worth more than a dead one. A man, more than a woman. White, more than black. A dead child is worth the least of all.
A partner presents the firm with a possible case. Eight children have died of leukemia in the small industrial town of Woburn. The families suspect the water is contaminated and they want someone to apologize.
Jan meets with the parents and explains legal reality to them. For him to take the case, there must be someone to sue...someone with a hefty bank account. With no big bucks in sight, he's not going to do anything about it.
Looking down the river on the way back, Jan decides to take a walk. He finds two factories on the shore that may be responsible for polluting the water supply. Then he notices something on the side of a truck that changes his mind about the case. A sign says that one of the businesses is "a division of Beatrice." He's found his deep pockets.
The tiny firm takes on Beatrice Foods and W.R. Grace & Co., two of the country's largest corporations, in a classic David versus Goliath battle. In this war, the weapons aren't stones but dollars. As Jan explains, in a big civil case the plan is to spend more than you need in order to make it bigger, "The first side that comes to their senses loses."
As the case wears on, the lawyers for the families are running out of ammunition. They borrow money, mortgage their houses, buy lottery tickets and finally sell the furniture. In one scene, they're sitting on the floor in empty offices with no desks trying to figure out how they can dig themselves out of their financial hole.
They are in it for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If they win this one, they win big. Jan, however, has a different obsession. He's lost sight of the money and wants the companies brought to justice. Even after the trial becomes a black hole for his legal firm, dragging down everyone, he refuses a $25 million settlement offer because he wants the companies to admit responsibility.
Based on a true story that took place in the eighties, the film is an indictment of the civil legal system. The account makes it clear that cases aren't about truth, but rather theatrics, manipulations of the court and negotiations between the sides. Although indeed they may have been, it's never shown that Beatrice and W.R. Grace were responsible for the deaths. Despite that, they were willing to lie in court, falsify evidence and spend huge amounts of money for damage control. As Joni Mitchell sings, justice is often "just ice."
Director and screenwriter Steven Zaillian ("Searching For Bobby Fischer" and screenwriter of "Schindler's List") has done an admirable job assembling a first-rate cast. There's not a weak link among the actors.
John Lithgow is Judge Walter Skinner, the somewhat self-righteous magistrate who seems to be part of a good ole boys network with the opposing attorneys. Dan Hedaya plays a smarmy owner of a tannery that has spilled toxic waste. Kathleen Quinlan and David Thornton are touching as parents of children who have died. William H. Macy's accountant James Gordon is a man under siege as he tries to salvage the firm.
Robert Duvall, as Jerome Fancher, lawyer for Beatrice, is the standout of the movie. Fancher is an eccentric who listens to baseball games on a cheap transistor radio and carries a beat-up briefcase adorned with cartoon stick-ons. His disarming bumpkin charm hides a shrewd legal mind. He is easy to like although he works for the wrong side. Duvall nails the role and steals the film.
Travolta is appropriately larger than life playing the flamboyant attorney, but his character has a problem. Although we are supposed to believe that he has abandoned his greed for a search for justice, we never see the change happen. His actions are different, but he never warms up.
The cinematography and lighting create a moody feel in even the most mundane scenes. Interviews with the parents are mostly talking heads, but are riveting. During the explanation of a boy's death on the way to the hospital, a shot of blinking taillights on a car stopped by the side of the road in the rain is positively chilling.
The theme of water as a dangerous product works well. Water glasses take on the same sinister image as our feathered friends did in "Birds". Especially in this town where toxic waste threatening the water supply has been a concern for decades, you won't be able to fill a glass from the faucet without having second thoughts.
(Michael Redman has written this column for over 23 years and is going out now to buy some bottled water. Email your liquid thoughts to Redman@indepen.com.)
[This appeared in the 1/14/99 "Bloomington Independent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at Redman@indepen.com]
-- mailto:redman@indepen.com This week's film review at http://www.indepen.com/ Film reviews archive at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman
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