A Civil Action
Based on a true story.,Al Eustis tells Jan he won't pay the amount of money to settle the lawsuit because once the amount is disclosed to the public, they'll file lawsuits as well. With all his years of experience in civil law, Jan should've known this is only an excuse because all contract settlement terms will remain confidential to any outside party, as the judge states at 1 hour and 30 minutes into the movie.,Jan Schlichtmann: [narrating] The odds of a plaintiff's lawyer winning in civil court are two to one against. Think about that for a second. Your odds of surviving a game of Russian roulette are better than winning a case at trial. 12 times better. So why does anyone do it? They don't. They settle. Out of the 780,000, only 12,000 or 11/2 percent ever reach a verdict. The whole idea of lawsuits is to settle, to compel the other side to settle. And you do that by spending more money than you should, which forces them to spend more money than they should, and whoever comes to their senses first loses. Trials are a corruption of the entire process and only fools who have something to prove end up ensnared in them. Now when I say prove, I don't mean about the case, I mean about themselves.,The producers wish to thank the people of Boston, Waltham, Northbridge, Charlestown, Dedham, Brimfield and Palmer, MA.,In the North American prints, the 1985 Touchstone Pictures logo played first, followed by the 1995 version of the 1987 Paramount Pictures plays at the beginning. The international prints had the logos alternating with Paramount played first followed by Touchstone. The North American prints ending it with the Buena Vista Pictures Distribution disclaimer, followed by the closing version of the Paramount Pictures and Touchstone Pictures logos. The international prints meanwhile had also removing the Buena Vista references and it goes directly to the closing version of Touchstone Pictures and Paramount Pictures logos.,Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Star Trek: Insurrection/Jack Frost/Shakespeare in Love/Psycho/The General (1998),Hard Workin' Man
Written by Jack Nitzsche, Ry Cooder, Paul Schrader
Performed by Don Van Vliet (as Captain Beefheart)
Courtesy of MCA Records
Under license from Universal Music Special Markets,John Travolta gives a pretty good performance here in Steve Zaillan's (scripter of Schindler's List) Civil Action as a hot shot lawyer who gets a case of people in a small town poisoned by the local water. Then the lawsuit begins, though we learn more here than any Grisham film. A film about being humane and trying to do the right thing over money. The entire supporting cast is a big boost, including Robert Duvall as the opposing attorney, William H. Macy, Tony Shalhoub as Travolta's attorney's, Kathleen Quinlann who is the heart of the movie and James Gandolfini as a resident. A,