A Civil Action
USA 1998
Reviewed by Stella Bruzzi
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Boston, Massachusetts. Jan Schlichtmann is a successful lawyer specialising in personal-injury claims. He is contacted by Anne Anderson, a mother seeking legal representation in her fight to win an apology from whomsoever caused the deaths of several children - including her own - from leukaemia by contaminating the well water in Woburn, Massachusetts, with chemical waste. Since the case is difficult to prove, Schlichtmann turns it down, but changes his mind after witnessing the dumping of waste from factories owned by Beatrice Foods and Grace & Co. The motion to dismiss brought by Beatrice and Grace's defence lawyers (Cheeseman and Facher, respectively) is denied, and the case comes to trial.
Schlichtmann and his colleagues are bankrupting themselves to pursue the case, but only two employees from either company will affirm the plaintiffs' story. The defence team is ready to strike a deal, but Jan deliberately demands an unrealistic compensation fee that is refused. The trial falters as Grace is acquitted by the jury. A paltry settlement of $375,000 per family is agreed with Beatrice Foods. Schlichtmann and his firm part company. He goes back on the case, finding another witness willing to testify. The case is brought to the court of appeal (not by Schlichtmann), and this time both plants are closed down. $69.4 million is paid out in compensation and clean-up costs by the companies. Jan switches to environmental law.
Review
Based on a real case concluded in 1990, A Civil Action is - like many courtroom dramas - a conscience film, which constructs a complex narrative from gritty moral material. Its realism is manifested in two distinct ways: through a functional but slick visual style (using montage to show the witnesses' testimonies, but refraining from other flourishes); and a tortuous attention to legal details. It's believable in a way that other courtroom dramas from 12 Angry Men (1956) to Philadelphia are not. Disillusionment-fuelled legal dramas, such as Sidney Lumet's The Verdict (which focuses on an ambulance-chaser jolted out of moral limbo by getting involved in an emotive negligence case) are, of course, common. But given the bad rap lawyers have in the US these days, A Civil Action is not heavy with cynicism. Comments about the system's shortcomings are almost ironic asides: "Trials are a corruption of the whole process," Jan's voiceover observes, while his rival, the defence lawyer Facher, says, "Here you're lucky if you find anything that resembles the truth." Overall, A Civil Action has a lightness of touch uncharacteristic of the genre.
Director Steven Zaillian (who made Searching for Bobby Fischer and is the screenwriter of The Falcon and the Snowman, Schindler's List and Patriot Games) cannily notes that in Jonathan Harr's original book, "All the important events happen outside the courtroom." Liberated from the constrictions (physical and otherwise) of making the trial its foundation, A Civil Action the movie puts its heart into the environmental-disaster case and Schlichtmann's hubristic rise and fall. Most moving is the depiction of the David-and-Goliath struggle between the parents (all lumberjack shirts, big jackets and shapeless cardigans), who simply seek an apology for their children's deaths, and the polluting factories and their haughty lawyers. Cinematic convention in the liberal trial film dictates (see The Accused) that a natural correlation exists between the emotional and the legal: whomsoever the audience identifies with almost always wins the case, with back-slappings, embraces and sanctimony all round. A Civil Action permits this fantasy for a while, only to let us down as the law outsmarts the grieving parents.
The form mimics the inherent cynicism of the script. When the trial is well under way, the judge retires the jury to consider whether or not there is a clear contamination case to be answered. Before they return, there is a protracted exchange between Schlichtmann and Facher. Schlichtmann stands restlessly and ponders the significance of the jury's lengthy deliberations, while Facher calmly eats his packed lunch and casts gentle aspersions on his profession. A legal drama in the celebratory mode would ensure that Facher - too clever, too recognisably the 'homespun' archetype epitomised by James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder (1959) - wouldn't win. Instead, Schlichtmann is the one who fails and is professionally ruined.
This twist sets up the remainder of the film, encapsulating the realistic premise that worthy cases are rarely capable of withstanding the well-oiled legal machine, an equivocation represented in Schlichtmann himself, a figure vacillating between swaggering superficiality and moral integrity. The only way Schlichtmann can win his final victory at appeal is to lose everything - job, money and possessions - until all he has left is a moral victory, its hollowness echoed by the almost cursory announcement of the settlement in a rapid, intertitled montage at the end. And so concludes a subtle indictment of both the law and its cinematic romanticisation.
Credits
- Producers
- Scott Rudin
- Robert Redford
- Rachel Pfeffer
- Screenplay
- Steven Zaillian
- Based on the book by
- Jonathan Harr
- Director of Photography
- Conrad L. Hall
- Editor
- Wayne Wahrman
- Production Designer
- David Gropman
- Music
- Danny Elfman
- ©Paramount Pictures Corporation/Touchstone Pictures
- Production Companies
- Paramount Pictures and Touchstone Pictures present a Wildwood Enterprises/Scott Rudin production
- Executive Producers
- Steven Zaillian
- David Wisnievitz
- Associate Producers
- David McGiffert
- Henry J. Golas
- Production Supervisor
- Katherine E. Beyda
- Production Controller
- Donald H. Walker
- Production Co-ordinator
- Laura 'L.T.' Tateishi
- Unit Production Managers
- David Wisnievitz
- Boston Unit:
- Katherine E. Beyda
- Location Managers
- Curtis Collins
- Jody Hummer
- Ken Haber
- Boston Unit:
- Charlie Harrington
- Assistant Directors
- David McGiffert
- Steve Hagen
- Timothy Engle
- 2nd Unit:
- Michael Amundson
- Script Supervisors
- Jane Goldsmith
- 2nd Unit:
- Steven Samanen
- Casting
- Avy Kaufman
- Associate:
- Julie Lichter
- Camera Operators
- Conrad W. Hall
- Michael Stone
- Boston Unit B:
- Jonathan Brown
- Steadicam Operator
- Boston Unit:
- Jonathan Brown
- Matte Paintings
- Illusion Arts
- Special Effects
- Co-ordinator:
- Guy Clayton
- Foreman:
- Guy Fario
- Boston Unit Foreman:
- Brian Ricci
- Art Directors
- David J. Bomba
- Boston Unit:
- John R. Jensen
- Set Decorator
- Tracey A. Doyle
- Scenic Artists
- Boston Unit:
- Paul W. Gorgine
- Caroline Irons
- Susan Peterson
- John H. Storey
- Costume Designer
- Shay Cunliffe
- Costume Supervisor
- Robert Q. Mathews
- Make-up Artists
- Chief:
- Whitney L. James
- Key:
- Cheryl Nick
- Hairstylists
- Chief:
- Martin Samuel
- Key:
- Arturo Rojas
- Title Design
- Brian King
- Titles/Opticals
- Buena Vista Imaging
- Orchestra Conductors
- Artie Kane
- Dan Carlin Jr
- Choir Conductor
- Steve Bartek
- Orchestrations
- Steve Bartek
- Additional:
- Edgardo Simone
- Executive in Charge of Music forThe Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group
- Kathy Nelson
- Score Producer
- Danny Elfman
- Music Editor
- Ellen Segal
- Score Recorder/Mixer
- Shawn Murphy
- Choir Recordist
- Robert Fernandez
- Soundtrack
- "Hard Workin' Man" by Jack Nitzsche, Ry Cooder, Paul Schrader, performed by Captain Beefheart; "Theme from 'A Summer Place' (Instrumental)" by Max Steiner; "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by Hugh Martin, Ralph Blane; "Where the Streets Have No Name" by Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen, Adam Clayton, performed by U2
- Production Sound Mixer
- David MacMillan
- Additional Audio
- Wylie Stateman
- Mark Ormandy
- Daniel R. Kerr
- Lee Lebaigue
- Ariel Kemp
- Recordist
- Alison Sanford
- Re-recording Mixers
- Gary Bourgeois
- Brad Sherman
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Larry Kemp
- Dialogue Editors
- Christopher W. Hogan
- Dan Rich
- Richard Dwan
- Sound Effects Editors
- Randy Kelley
- Christopher Assells
- Hector C. Gika
- Bryan Bowen
- ADR
- Supervisor:
- Chris Jargo
- Editors:
- Constance A. Kazmer
- Mary Ruth Smith
- Foley
- Artists:
- Jeffrey Wilhoit
- James Moriana
- Recordist:
- Julie C. Lucas
- Mixer:
- David W. Alstadter
- Editors:
- Craig S. Jaeger
- Dan Hegeman
- Consultants
- Jan Schlichtmann
- Medical Technical:
- Donna Duffy
- Geological Technical:
- Bob Francis - American Drilling Services
- Tom Brewer
- Baseball:
- Charlie Zaillian
- Legal:
- Edward J. Nowak
- Jacob M. Yellin
- Jay Handlin
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Mark Riccardi
- Animal Trainers
- Birds and Animals Unlimited
- Stacy M. Basil
- Melinda Bullion
- Cast
- John Travolta
- Jan Schlichtmann
- Robert Duvall
- Jerome Facher
- James Gandolfini
- Al Love
- Dan Hedaya
- John Riley
- John Lithgow
- Judge Skinner
- William H. Macy
- James Gordon
- Kathleen Quinlan
- Anne Anderson
- Tony Shalhoub
- Kevin Conway
- Zeljko Ivanek
- Bill Crowley
- Bruce Norris
- William Cheeseman
- Peter Jacobson
- Neil Jacobs
- Mary Mara
- Kathy Boyer
- Stephen Fry
- Pinder
- David Thornton
- Richard Aufiero
- Sydney Pollack
- Al Eustis
- Ned Eisenberg
- Uncle Pete
- Margot Rose
- Donna Robbins
- Daniel von Bargen
- Mr Granger
- Caroline Carrigan
- Evelyn Love
- Paul Desmond
- Shalline
- Michael P. Byrne
- Barbas
- Tracy Miller
- Paul Hewitt
- Clayton Landey
- Grace workers
- Paul Ben-Victor
- Pasquriella
- Elizabeth Burnette
- Lauren Aufiero
- Alan Wilder
- Gregg Joseph Monk
- Harout Beshlian
- insurance lawyers
- Josh Pais
- law clerk
- Haskell Vaughn Anderson III
- courtroom 7 clerk
- Kaiulani Lee
- Mrs Granger
- Howie Carr
- radio talk show host
- Denise Dowse
- judge
- Pearline Fergerson
- court clerk
- Scott Weintraub
- Robert Cicchini
- personal insurance lawyers
- Christopher Stevenson
- insurance plaintiff
- Kevin Fry
- waiter
- Brian Turk
- mover
- Rikki Klieman
- TV reporter
- David Barrett
- Ryan Janis
- Rob McElhenney
- teenagers on property
- Mike Biase
- market clerk
- Richard Calnan
- Woburn traffic cop
- Gene Wolande
- hotel clerk
- Sam Travolta
- Grace attorney
- Gregg Shawzin
- Juli Donald
- Sayda Alan
- Catherine Leahan
- reporters
- Bruce Holman
- federal marshal
- John Lafayette
- Charles Levin
- Byron Jennings
- Jay Patterson
- geologists
- Charlie Stavola
- detective
- Mark Riccardi
- Stand-in/photo double for John Travolta
- Michael Kaufman
- stand-in
- Taylor Bernard
- trustee's assistant
- Molly Allen
- saleswoman
- [uncredited]
- Kathy Bates
- bankruptcy judge
- Phil Hawn
- attorney in courtroom gallery
- Jim Jenkins
- police officer
- Edward Herrmann
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- United International Pictures (UK) Ltd
- 10,352 feet
- 115 minutes 2 seconds
- SDDS/Dolby digital/Digital DTS Sound
- Colour by
- DeLuxe Laboratories
- Prints by
- Technicolor