by Curtis Edmonds -- blueduck@hsbr.org
When I was in law school, we once argued the moral effect of the economic calculus that A Civil Action presents us with. Plaintiff's attorney Jan Schlichtmann (John Travolta) explains to us via voiceover that a client with a disability is "worth more" than a client who is dead. This is because a person with a disability can be expected to rack up costly bills for health care and personal assistance, where a dead client can't incur any more bills from the grave. A civil action (as defense lawyer Robert Duvall explains, later in the movie) is about money -- compensating the injured party -- so it makes sense to give parties who survive their injuries more money than those who don't, then, doesn't it?
However, this leaves you with a moral problem. The professor put it this way: if I run you over with my car, but I don't kill you, isn't it in my financial self-interest to back over you and make sure that you're dead? I'm going to get sued whether you live or die -- at least this way, I can cut my losses.
A Civil Action doesn't quite reach that wicked little googly, but it's a commendable attempt to inject concepts of decency and morality into the questionable realm of tort law. A Civil Action just happens to be about a lawsuit filed by eight families in Woburn, Massachusetts, who allege that the dumping of chemical solvents into the local aquifer caused their children to develop leukemia and die. While this is a tragedy for the plaintiffs, for the audience, it's almost incidental. The movie could have been about almost any case, up to and including that poor woman who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonalds. What we care about, and what the movie ultimately cares about, is the duel between Travolta and Duvall, and that duel is much more about pride and money than it is about the families and their dead children.
Travolta is Jan Schlichtmann, a silk-suit attorney with a kamikaze boutique practice in Boston. His style is go-for-broke. He focuses all his time and talents on one case at a time, hoping to score a multi-million dollar settlement. We don't see Schlichtmann taking the routine slip-and-fall cases against the mom-and-pop liquor store, instead, his target is high-dollar deep-pocket corporations. He's not a shark -- a shark will eat anything in its path. He's a fisherman looking to hook a deep-sea monster. And when the orphan case of the Woburn families appears on his desk, he's quick to dismiss it -- until he finds that corporate giants Beatrice Foods and Grace have plants nearby. When Travolta sees the Beatrice logo on the side of a plant truck, he gazes at it as if it were an undiscovered country of riches, or as if he were Captain Ahab looking at the white whale for the first time.
Duvall gets the plum role of Jerome Facher, counsel for Beatrice Foods and senior partner at a big rich Boston law firm. Facher is a real person, supposedly a brilliant trial technician, obviously smart enough to get to teach at Harvard, but he's the sort to put his light under a bushel. Since we don't get to see his talents much (the three-month trial takes up less than three minutes on the screen), Duvall shows us Facher's quirks, and it's a broad repertoire. When confronted early on with an annoying phone call from his co-defendant, Duvall leans back in his chair, throws a tennis ball against the wall like he's Steve McQueen from The Great Escape, and pretends not to understand a word his cohort is saying. It's a hell of an acting job, and Duvall should take the Oscar here he should have won for The Apostle.
Both actors are fortunate enough to get roles that match their strengths. Duvall is stable where Travolta is flashy, quiet where Travolta is intense, disciplined when Travolta is raving. Duvall wins the acting duel, but it's Travolta's movie, and he's the one that has the responsibility of carrying it. Travolta takes A Civil Action as far as it can possibly go and then some.
The story of A Civil Action isn't the technical twists and turns of the trial. Some of the technical stuff is wrong (but you'd only know that if you spent three years in law school). The story is about Travolta, and how a smart, calculating trial lawyer gets destroyed by greed and obsession... and maybe something else. As the trial continues, the costs escalate, and Schlichtmann and his partners must risk everything they have on their abilities to reach a verdict.
How this happens is the meat of the movie. Why it happens isn't clear. Schlichtmann is an enigmatic character, and Travolta keeps his acting cards close to his chest. Is he really concerned about justice, or dreaming about a billion-dollar payday? Is he fighting for the families or his own sense of price? It's a fascinating discussion (I vote greed) and makes A Civil Action well worth the price of admission.
If I have a complaint about this movie, it's that we don't see enough of the lesser characters that populate Jonathan Harr's great book that the movie was based on, or the great character actors who play them. Kathleen Quinlan plays the leader of the families, an elementary school librarian who lost her son and a good part of her soul to leukemia. She's chillingly effective -- the scene where she talks about the "back left corner" will floor you even if you're waiting for it) but she's not given enough time. Likewise, Tony Shalhoub is all but wasted as Travolta's partner -- if Shalhoub had been given half the screen time that he received in The Siege, A Civil Action would be the better for it. John Lithgow just blends into the background as a judge. Only William H. Macy is given any time at all as the harried accountant struggling mightily to pay bills and serve as the voice of reason.
Audiences play lots of roles in different movies. Here, we are the jury in the case of Jan Schlichtmann, attorney at law. We get to examine his motives, try his character, and sit in judgment on his decisions. A Civil Action is the best jury duty you'll ever sit through, and (unless you live in New York) you probably won't have to pay for parking. (And big-screen lawyers are much cooler than real-life ones are, trust me.)
Rating: A-
-- Curtis Edmonds
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