SPOILERS.
Actually this is a pretty well-done movie about environmental law. There have been quite a few of them around over the last decade or so but this is one of the better ones. It follows the usual configuration -- the lone hero beginning as a materialist and contracting a bad case of ideals, making sacrifices, risking everything. But in this case it's an entire law firm instead of just one guy, and basically they lose the case.
John Travolta, ably supported by Bill Macy and others, is Jan Schlichtmann, a "personal injury lawyer" (we know what that means) is approached by a woman who, along with eight others in Woburn, have lost children because the drinking water was polluted with toxic waste. He is sympathetic but he demurs, seeing an expensive case from which he will profit only if he wins, and no money in the pockets of the guy who owns the polluting tannery. Then he discovers that the land is owned by W. R. Grace and Beatrice, two mega giant corporations. Between them they own every brand name you can think of. They own Heinz ketchup. Travolta can think of 57 different ways of squeezing $150 million out of them. The scent of pelf sets Travolta's Darwinian points aquiver.
But, as they say, pride goeth before a fall. The salivating Travolta brings suit and is opposed by Robert Duvall, playing Jerry Facher. (All of these are real people with real names.) The movie doesn't give Travolta an obvious flaw like Paul Newman's disillusioned alcoholism in "The Verdict," but it doesn't hagiographize him either. He has more guts than brains. He gets caught with his pants down a few times when he makes courtroom errors that Facher is teaching his Harvard law students are elementary. ("Never ask a witness why, unless you already know the answer." You can learn that from watching Perry Mason.) This Facher is pretty quick on his feet and he clobbers Travolta's character, all the while smiling politely, seemingly distracted, fiddling with pens, wrapping a string absent-minded around the fraying handle of his ancient briefcase. It's a very good performance.
Travolta is good too. We never know how serious he is about his motives, or whether he has any idea what they are. He stares ahead and speaks sternly of "eight dead children" and "looking for justice", but at a formal meeting with the two mega giant's lawyers he makes such impossible financial demands that they walk out on him -- and he never discussed his plans with his partners.
While the jury is out, Duvall offers him TWENTY million bucks to settle and Travolta oozes dignity as he rips up the offer and tosses it in the trash, to Duvall's amusement. Well, he may seem like Gary Cooper in "High Noon," but when you come right down to it he, like Cooper, is playacting. What happened to the interests of his clients? Heroic gestures in the pursuit of self-aggrandizement aren't going to help the families of those "dead children" living up there in Nowheresville. Stripped of the frame the film tries to give him -- a selfish man who discovers he has ideals -- Schlichtmann becomes not just an ambulance chaser but an ambulance chaser who overreached.
In the end Travolta's firm, largely because of his own intransigence, sees the suit against Beatrice thrown out and has to settle for eight million from W. R. Grace. The meeting between Travolta and Sidney Pollack, playing Grace's representative, is hilarious. Travolta walks into the Harvard Club to meet Pollack, carrying a bundle of facts, all business and formality. But Pollack, like Duval, is way ahead of him in every regard. Man, has Pollack got "condescension" down pat. Pollack: "What kind of Harvard man are you?" Travolta: "The Cornell kind." Pollack: "You didn't go to Harvard? Somebody told me you went to Harvard. Don't get me wrong, Cornell's a fine school. (Pause) A damned good school."
In the end, Travolta goes back to personal injury cases, his partners split, and he declares bankruptcy (after a two-year vacation -- in Hawaii, which the movie omits). He devotes a lot of personal time to digging up new evidence but has no resources to pursue leads, so he turns the case over to the Environmental Protection Agency, which finds merit in it, convicts the corporations' lawyers of various offenses, and levies fines against them while a heavenly choir rises in the background and there is the sound of Sox fans cheering.
That was in, what, 1988? I wonder if the EPA would be so zealous today. Here's an assessment of the present administrator from the organization Earthjustice, a prominent, respectable legal organization. "Governor Leavitt's appointment to head the EPA puts an anti-environmental politician in charge of regulating industries that pollute the nation's air and water," said Earthjustice Denver attorney Jim Angell. "We know from his history on environmental issues in Utah that his preferred method is to exclude the broader public from the process when he wants to make decisions that could harm the environment."
Of course it's good that the corporate giants were made to pay, even if the amount was the equivalent of a licensure fee. And no need to feel too sorry for Jan Schlichtmann. A book about the case made him famous, and this movie made him even MORE famous -- and rich too. He now lives in the exclusive mansion-besotted suburb of Beverly, Mass.
It's quite a good movie. Yes, there's a lot of ambiguity to be found in it, if you don't simply accept it as a Manichaean struggle between black and white, but in that respect it resembles real life, which is rarely anything other than fuzzy.
Actually this is a pretty well-done movie about environmental law. There have been quite a few of them around over the last decade or so but this is one of the better ones. It follows the usual configuration -- the lone hero beginning as a materialist and contracting a bad case of ideals, making sacrifices, risking everything. But in this case it's an entire law firm instead of just one guy, and basically they lose the case.
John Travolta, ably supported by Bill Macy and others, is Jan Schlichtmann, a "personal injury lawyer" (we know what that means) is approached by a woman who, along with eight others in Woburn, have lost children because the drinking water was polluted with toxic waste. He is sympathetic but he demurs, seeing an expensive case from which he will profit only if he wins, and no money in the pockets of the guy who owns the polluting tannery. Then he discovers that the land is owned by W. R. Grace and Beatrice, two mega giant corporations. Between them they own every brand name you can think of. They own Heinz ketchup. Travolta can think of 57 different ways of squeezing $150 million out of them. The scent of pelf sets Travolta's Darwinian points aquiver.
But, as they say, pride goeth before a fall. The salivating Travolta brings suit and is opposed by Robert Duvall, playing Jerry Facher. (All of these are real people with real names.) The movie doesn't give Travolta an obvious flaw like Paul Newman's disillusioned alcoholism in "The Verdict," but it doesn't hagiographize him either. He has more guts than brains. He gets caught with his pants down a few times when he makes courtroom errors that Facher is teaching his Harvard law students are elementary. ("Never ask a witness why, unless you already know the answer." You can learn that from watching Perry Mason.) This Facher is pretty quick on his feet and he clobbers Travolta's character, all the while smiling politely, seemingly distracted, fiddling with pens, wrapping a string absent-minded around the fraying handle of his ancient briefcase. It's a very good performance.
Travolta is good too. We never know how serious he is about his motives, or whether he has any idea what they are. He stares ahead and speaks sternly of "eight dead children" and "looking for justice", but at a formal meeting with the two mega giant's lawyers he makes such impossible financial demands that they walk out on him -- and he never discussed his plans with his partners.
While the jury is out, Duvall offers him TWENTY million bucks to settle and Travolta oozes dignity as he rips up the offer and tosses it in the trash, to Duvall's amusement. Well, he may seem like Gary Cooper in "High Noon," but when you come right down to it he, like Cooper, is playacting. What happened to the interests of his clients? Heroic gestures in the pursuit of self-aggrandizement aren't going to help the families of those "dead children" living up there in Nowheresville. Stripped of the frame the film tries to give him -- a selfish man who discovers he has ideals -- Schlichtmann becomes not just an ambulance chaser but an ambulance chaser who overreached.
In the end Travolta's firm, largely because of his own intransigence, sees the suit against Beatrice thrown out and has to settle for eight million from W. R. Grace. The meeting between Travolta and Sidney Pollack, playing Grace's representative, is hilarious. Travolta walks into the Harvard Club to meet Pollack, carrying a bundle of facts, all business and formality. But Pollack, like Duval, is way ahead of him in every regard. Man, has Pollack got "condescension" down pat. Pollack: "What kind of Harvard man are you?" Travolta: "The Cornell kind." Pollack: "You didn't go to Harvard? Somebody told me you went to Harvard. Don't get me wrong, Cornell's a fine school. (Pause) A damned good school."
In the end, Travolta goes back to personal injury cases, his partners split, and he declares bankruptcy (after a two-year vacation -- in Hawaii, which the movie omits). He devotes a lot of personal time to digging up new evidence but has no resources to pursue leads, so he turns the case over to the Environmental Protection Agency, which finds merit in it, convicts the corporations' lawyers of various offenses, and levies fines against them while a heavenly choir rises in the background and there is the sound of Sox fans cheering.
That was in, what, 1988? I wonder if the EPA would be so zealous today. Here's an assessment of the present administrator from the organization Earthjustice, a prominent, respectable legal organization. "Governor Leavitt's appointment to head the EPA puts an anti-environmental politician in charge of regulating industries that pollute the nation's air and water," said Earthjustice Denver attorney Jim Angell. "We know from his history on environmental issues in Utah that his preferred method is to exclude the broader public from the process when he wants to make decisions that could harm the environment."
Of course it's good that the corporate giants were made to pay, even if the amount was the equivalent of a licensure fee. And no need to feel too sorry for Jan Schlichtmann. A book about the case made him famous, and this movie made him even MORE famous -- and rich too. He now lives in the exclusive mansion-besotted suburb of Beverly, Mass.
It's quite a good movie. Yes, there's a lot of ambiguity to be found in it, if you don't simply accept it as a Manichaean struggle between black and white, but in that respect it resembles real life, which is rarely anything other than fuzzy.