A Civil Action

Staring: John Travolta, Robert Duvall, Tony Shalhoub, William H. Macy, Zeljko Ivanek, Bruce Norris, James Gandolfini, John Lithgow Judge, Kathleen Quinlan, Peter Jacobson, Sydney Pollack, Denise Y. Dowse, Stephen Fry, Dan Hedaya, Edward Herrmann, Paul Hewitt, Bruce E. Holman, Mary Mara, David Thornton, Gene Wolande

Review by The Ranting WolfCastle

    I once watched a movie entitled Earth Girls Are Easy, it had a great cast, but that was all.  It was a poorly written story, but still managed to be slightly entertaining.  A Civil Action is worse. 

    Since I feel it is a waste of my time to write a plot summary for this terrible film, I am using the Internet Movie Database's:   Jan Schlittman (Travolta) agrees to represent eight families whose children died from leukemia after two large corporations leaked toxic chemicals into the Boston water supply, even though the case could mean financial, and career suicide for him.

    At no time during my two hour viewing of this film, was I even remotely entertained.  I went in with expectations, and none of them were fulfilled.   I'm not the biggest fan of courtroom dramas in the first place, some have won me over, most have not.  Dry stories like this one must be incredible to earn my good graces.  This film did not.  I feel like I just spent my last six dollars to sit in a chair.  It's like two hours of my life were totally wasted.

    The acting was good.  But everyone in the film wasted their efforts on it.  John Travolta is a good actor, however my opinion of him is greatly reduced just knowing that he is in a film as horrid as this.  Robert Duvall is wasted, as is John Lithgow.

    The story never caught my interest, I never wanted to like John Travolta's character, and the overall experience of this garbage left me so unfulfilled that I found myself trying to make conversation with my friends to make the time pass.   Every line that was uttered in the film made my mind wander to events that were taking place in my life.  I was never involved in anything about the film.

    Jan Schlittman (Travolta) is a personal injury lawyer.  One of those guys that have commercials during reruns of Ricky Lake.  Of course a primary goal in a movie where one of these "ambulance chasers" is your main character, you'd think would be to win over the audience, to make the viewers like this character.  I never felt that happen.  In fact during the movie I felt myself becoming slightly concerned with how Schlittman would win the money to cover his losses, and not if the families would be compensated for the death of their children.  That's not a very moral message.  I didn't care about the victims in the least.  It's supposed to be big tragedy that these children are dying, but I never even thought about it.  They didn't establish the fact that anybody really did.  The parents were upset and everything, but they never made me feel that.  This movie had no emotional appeal at all.  It's outrageous.

    And of course one of the parents of the children that died managed to piss me off.  The case is over, and she's bitching about the outcome.  Saying that nobody could possibly understand the pain she has felt.  And that may very well be, but the lawyers gave up everything for this lady, and she throws it in their faces.   She doesn't even accept an apology.  This is irritating writing.

    Now about an hour and forty five minutes into the movie, I expected it to be over.  The case was over, which generally means the end of a trial movie.   Wrong.  Instead the writers felt they needed to introduce an all new character that had never been seen, or even mentioned before.  I guess that's one way to hide the end of your movie.  It was about this point in the movie that I started pulling out my eyelashes, in order to dull the pain that was this film.  I wanted to leave so badly I had to practically nail my hand to the arm rest to keep my self from standing up and walking out.

    Fifteen minutes, and a thousand tears of regret later, the movie was ending.  Oh sweet bliss.  And what do I have to sit through but an epilogue.   Something that tells you what happens after the movie ends.  I don't need this!  I don't want to know about what happens to these characters that I have grown to be so disgusted with that I could kill myself.  I can put that much together by my self, and if I can't then I don't need to know about it.  If you can't infer everything that happens after the movie, then you don't need to know it.  But nonetheless we get it.

    Overall, the movie was too long, the characters were shallow, the story was pointless, and much talent was wasted.  I feel so used by this movie, I never want to see another courtroom drama, for as long as I live.  I wish I could call the producer of the film and demand my six bucks back.  This is a terrible film, arguably the worst I've ever seen.  Nothing could have saved this boring script that seems to meander around aimlessly until finally finding a stopping point.

0% = F-