Delivering the verdict two thirds into the movie is anti-climactic, while Schlichtmann's belated atonement feels beside the point.
Comment
02/09/06
A Civil Action (1998)
60
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:63
Fresh:38
Rotten:25
Average Rating:6.4/10
Consensus: Intelligent and unconventional.
Runtime: 1 hr 55 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Jan Schlichtmann, a tenacious young lawyer, is confronted with the litigation of a lifetime in this unbelievable real-life story. Several families in the small town of Woburn, Massachusetts, have... [More]
Starring: John Travolta, Robert Duvall, Stephen Fry, James Gandolfini
Director: Steven Zaillian
Reviews for A Civil Action
Top CriticA fine script from director Steven Zaillian gives all involved plenty to chew.
04/17/01
Top CriticTravolta may not be perfectly cast as jaded attorney Jan, and does not make this role his own, but still carries the film rather well, and I can't complain.
01/01/00
This is a case in which the material really is better served in book form.
11/22/09
The movie becomes one more David-and-Goliath morality play.
07/30/07
Based on a true story, this is an intelligent legal thriller, very much in the mode of 1970s issue-oriented films, that may be too subtle and complex for the damands of today's market.
06/01/06
While Travolta is passable as Schlichtmann, it is the outstanding work from Duvall, Macy and briefly Tony Shalhoub that drive the story.
12/06/05
I expected a harder hitting indictment against the uncaring power of corporate America. Instead, we get a middlin' courtroom drama that lacks the intensity of such films as the 1982 Sidney Lumet/Paul Newman film, The Verdict.
04/09/05
the film is slightly overlong and the ending is anti-cathartic.
02/28/05
... hints at the complex moral issues that vein the story.
02/05/05
A legal drama that doesn't follow the usual Hollywood-John Grisham formula.
07/06/04
neatly avoids slipping into melodrama, and despite plenty of niggling minor faults along the way the movie finally succeeds. With a more comfortably cast lead actor it could have been even more powerful.
07/31/03
The film is so daring because it features a protagonist that we cannot and do not sympathize with.
05/22/03
No review available.
05/14/03
My only real problem is with the script.
02/08/03
More complex, subtle, perplexing and memorable than the usual courtroom theatrics.
10/15/02
It’s not bad, but with everything else out there, I won’t recommend it.
08/21/02
Just when it seemed the courtroom drama was suffering a fatal case of John Grisham, A Civil Action" rescues the genre.
07/02/02
Though the plot plays largely by the numbers, Zaillian treats the material with a welcome level of maturity that manages to sustain interest even when the storyline doesn't.
06/05/02
Latest News for A Civil Action
September 10, 2006:
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