A Civil Action **** (1998, John Travolta, Robert Duvall, Kathleen Quinlan) – Classic Movie Review 5403

Writer-director Steven Zaillian’s excellent 1998 legal drama comes out fighting and wins in a knockout. It stars John Travolta as tenacious plaintiff’s attorney Jan Schlichtmann and Robert Duvall as his canny old opponent, Jerry Facher, the defendant’s case lawyer for Beatrice Foods.

Travolta is well cast and first rate as the cocky Boston attorney, while a scene-stealing Duvall was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his outstanding performance as defendant’s attorney. Duvall won Best Supporting Actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 1999. Conrad L Hall gained the film’s second Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography.

Zaillian’s strong, campaigning screenplay is based on a book by Jonathan Harr, in turn based on a court case about environmental pollution in Woburn, Massachusetts, in the Eighties. It centres on the issue of industrial solvent trichloroethylene and its contamination of a local aquifer, underground saturated rock through which water can move easily. Much of our drinking water is contained in shallow aquifers.

A lawsuit was filed over industrial operations that appeared to have caused fatal cases of leukaemia and cancer, and other health problems, in Woburn’s population. Kathleen Quinlan plays Woburn resident Anne Anderson, who calls in Schlichtmann and his personal injury lawyer firm to start civil legal action against those responsible for the contamination.

Also in the outstanding cast are Tony Shalhoub as attorney Kevin Conway, William H Macy as financial adviser James Gordon, Željko Ivanek as attorney Bill Crowley, Mary Mara as Kathy Boyer, John Lithgow as Judge Walter J Skinner, Dan Hedaya as John Riley, owner of Beatrice Foods subsidiary John J Riley Tannery, James Gandolfini as W. R. Grace employee Al Love, Stephen Fry as scientific expert witness Dr George Pinder, Howie Carr as the radio talk show host, Bruce Norris as W. R. Grace attorney William Cheeseman, Peter Jacobson as Neil Jacobs, Sydney Pollack as the CEO of W. R. Grace and Company Al Eustis, and Kathy Bates as the Bankruptcy Judge.

It is one of Duvall’s seven Oscar nominations – for The Godfather (1972), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Great Santini (1979, The Apostle (1997), A Civil Action (1998), The Judge (2014) and Tender Mercies (1983) for which he won the Best Actor Academy Award.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5403

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com