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Reviews
A Civil Action (1998)
Great story, great movie
A wonderful, beautiful book made into an equally good movie. Wonderful acting from Travolta, Macy, Duvall, Lithgow, Gandolfini, and the brilliant Kathleen Quinlan.
Jan Schlichtmann is not a sensible, prudent, or very likable person. He is arrogant, reckless, greedy, ambitious, and brusque. Buried in there is a social conscience, however.
This is a story about how a very flawed person--a real person--does the right thing. In doing so he ruins himself financially and takes a lot of people with him--his partners and friends. He does prevail. Do the injured parents thank him? No. Their grief is still so immense that they cannot be thankful even to these men who have really given them their all.
The scene with James Gandolfini sitting at the table with his wife and eight children is one of my favorites in any movie. He is another person who suddenly realizes that, no matter what it costs him, he has to do what is right.
Although the good guys win it is not an altogether happy story--there are the parents of dead kids and the ruined careers--but it is unforgettable and it is real. At the end, Schlichtmann says he would do it again if he had it to do over. This is what real heroes are like, in the real world. They do not always get thanks and a medal, but they do things for all of us anyway.