Initially, A Civil Action seems like a routine David vs. Goliath legal drama, complete with a small town’s contaminated water supply(why always the water? Because it addresses a universal need that all viewers can relate to). Here I was waiting for the obligatory scene where the Lawyer with a Heart of Gold offers the Corrupt Corporate Executive a glass of the Water of Discord, only to be pleasantly surprised to see the film indeed using a glass of water to make a point, but in a way I did not expect.
Now, whether or not A Civil Action is a formulaic plot with a foregone conclusion is irrelevant. A case of water contamination in Woburn, Massachusetts in the 1980s might have been the reason for making this movie, but it’s not the reason to see it (especially considering that it must have been a long road from the actual events, to Jonathan Harr’s non-fiction book, to director Steven Zaillian’s script, and I doubt that the facts, such as they may have been, made it intact).
The cold, hard facts of the case could surely fill entire reams, but we must read between the lines because, whether by design or accident, the most important thing in this film is not Story, or History, or even Truth, but Art; specifically, the craft of acting. The plot takes a backseat to the characters, and the script to the actors.
John Travolta, Robert Duvall, William H. Macy, John Lithgow, Dan Hedaya, James Gandolfini, Sydney Pollack. They could read off the phone book and make it compelling. Here they take stereotypes (the Travolta and Duvall roles, for example, go at least as far back as 1960 with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March in Inherit the Wind, who were in turn dramatizing something that had happened 35 years earlier) and turn them into round characters, whose narrative arcs generate much more interest than the outcome of the trial.
Each of them hits the perfect note for their respective character, but Bill Macy, in the role of Travolta’s long-suffering financial adviser, is by far the MVP, testing the limits of his sanity (something Macy has turned into a form of art) while he struggles to keep the firm afloat. In a brief but brilliant scene, he cuts the office’s cleaning staff from the budget, saying, “We’ll empty our own ashtrays;” he then immediately grabs his ashtray and empties it, as if to say, “see? It’s not that hard, and more importantly, it’s cheap” (Duvall’s character, a professor in addition to a lawyer, gets a similar great moment: [in a classroom] “If you fall asleep at the table, the first thing out of your mouths should be…” [cut to Duvall sleeping during a trial] Judge: Do you swear to tell the whole truth? Duvall: [waking up] Objection!).
Its attention to detail is another of the film’s high points. Duvall is a master at this; although a respected and feared attorney, he carries around a threadbare briefcase, which at one point he takes the trouble to patch up with Scotch tape. These are little things that reveal the humanity of the characters, but also serve to conceal it: “Duvall … hides his knowledge behind a facade of eccentricity” (Ebert).
Zaillian’s style is indirect, concerned less with the action than with the agents of the action. This is a film about actors on a stage; whether these are literal actors on a literal stage, or lawyers in a courtroom, makes little difference.
90% of Everything is Crap 