Story Lost In Travolta Performance Piece
Newcastle Herald
Friday April 30, 1999
WHEN eight small-town Massachusetts families who have lost children to poisoned drinking water ask him to file a wrongful death suit against polluting industries, personal injury lawyer John Travolta can barely hide his delight.
You can almost see the dollar signs twinkling in his eyes.
Travolta is a slick, smart and successful player of legal gamesmanship. And if the suit fits, he'll file it.
But rather than fighting the good fight for truth and justice in the courtroom, Travolta prefers forcing out-of-court settlements.
He admits it amounts to blackmail.
But there's no time for sentimentality when you're talking damages of $300million-plus.
What price do you put on human suffering? How much is he willing to stake for the big pay-off? Will he go for broke?
This is the sort of all-American legal ethics melodrama played out on every other episode of the television dramas The Practice and Law & Order.
And it's staged very confidently, very effectively in A Civil Action, which is based on Jonathan Harr's dictionary-thick best-seller about a real ? and really complex ? legal battle waged at great personal cost by flashy Boston attorney Jan Schlictmann.
Travolta makes Schlictmann particularly charming. He's the best-dressed bottom-feeding ambulance chaser you're likely to meet at the scene of a fresh fender-bender.
Duvall, likewise, is suitably eccentric as his legal adversary, whose defence of corporate giant Beatrice Foods amounts to high-stakes poker bluffing.
But the real-life drama, heartbreak and outrage of the grief-stricken families of Woburn ? seemingly powerless against corporate polluters wealthy enough to bury their crimes ? is unfortunately relegated to backdrop status.
Their story deserved better and could have made for a more emotional film.
But that might have turned A Civil Action into something less than a John Travolta performance piece.
? James Joyce Tower, Charlestown, Glendale, Maitland, Raymond Terrace, Nelson Bay
© 1999 Newcastle Herald
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