Review of A Civil Action (1998) by Ken C — 05 Dec 2010

My entire middle school watched this together a few years back because the entire school dedicated a whole 2 weeks of studying about toxic waste dumping. Everyone was bored out of there minds but I found the movie to be well acted and funny.

It's about a group of lawyers who are defending two families that are sueing a company responsible for dumping waste into a river and killing there children. The main lawyer of the movie, John Travolta gets a little too obsessed in winning this case and makes his colleagues take the same actions he is that could lead to them getting broke. It's one of those stress movies where you can feel what the characters are going through but luckily it has a fantastic cast to calm your nerves. Robert Duvall is by far the best out of all of them and his performance actually led to him getting an Oscar nomination. He always seems so laid back and cool about everything even in the most stressful of situations, he kind of reminds me of myself before the doctors put me on speed. The rest of the cast is also excellent, any movie with John Lithgow in it is instantly good just because it's him and William H. Macy as well as John Travolta are all great.

Overall a well acted, funny, stressful and fascinating look at all the legal stuff your lawyers do for you. It's entertaining and has a few moments that actually kind of feel like a Seinfeld sketch or something you would here as a conversation in a Tarantino movie.