Hollywood hasn’t really come up with a good number of well-made, thought-provoking movies in the past. However, one movie that stands out in this area, without doubt, is A CIVIL ACTION. Starring John Travolta, this movie based on the struggle of a formerly finance-centered lawyer to get justice to unfortunate leukemia victims, is a marvellous example of how a law-based movie should be presented.
A lot of court room dramas, even the most interesting ones, have mostly been seen in a love story, or a family drama, or even an issue-based movie. But A CIVIL ACTION deals solely with the life of a lawyer and how he gets into the roots of a case and does what no one, even he himself, never thought of.
The director certainly knew what he wanted out of this movie for sure. In many places, the general commercial movie audiences might find the movie dry and way too serious and drab. But at the end of the day, for the sake of realism, that treatment was very necessary. At the end of the day, it is that impact that is bound to help the movie the impact it deserves to make with its realistic execution of a thought-provoking subject.
To help his cause of a very down-to-earth and practical portrayal of this law story, the director seems to get able help from his cast and crew. The camerawork and cinematography seem nearly perfect to help the frames alone make a decent impact. In addition, he editing is crisp and so are the dialogues, that seem right out of a person’s every-day life. The background music as well as the sound effects are pleasing and appropriate too. Therefore on the whole the members of the technical team have done their homework and it shows pretty clearly as the movie is running.
However, if the director knows which direction to sail in, there is a totally different person who helps him sail in that direction. The hero of the movie as well as the script, is no doubt John Travolta--an actor par excellence, a performer beyond words, and a character that goes all the way into the script to win the movie accolades that it deserves.
It is John Travolta’s inexplicably brilliant performance that explains why this movie went on to become such a grand success. Travolta proved with BROKEN ARROW that he can do some fantastic action. With FACE/OFF the guy proved his excellence at enacting two extremely opposite characters at the same time. With DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE, he proved how he can single-handedly steal the show with an emotional performance. With GET SHORTY and BE COOL the actor proved his tremendous ability to make people laugh. With PHENOMENON, the actor turned in a phenomenal performance that made an incalculable amount of people cry. If that’s all he had proved so far in his career, then after A CIVIL ACTIOn, he proves that he does NOT need to prove ANYTHING to ANYONE in the future. His performances in each of his parts, particularly A CIVIL ACTION, are hard for any other actor to repeat. Period. John Travolta stands in an own huge class of his...and that’s basically what he has yet again proven ending with A CIVIL ACTION.
Furthermore, the director and his ace Travolta both get ample assistance from the supporting cast to help make A CIVIL ACTION a marvellous ’’legal thriller’’. It’s impact is surely great, and there’s no reason, one feels after viewing the movie, why it shouldn’t be? Hats off...a great movie right there!