This is one of my favorite David vs Goliath stories of all time. It's the (to my mind) perfect fable. A small law firm, 3 lawyers and an accountant makes a good living selecting cases they can win, until the lead lawyer, played by John Travolta, gets hooked and wants to help.The film kind of works as a courtroom drama. It makes several points, rather obviously that the trial process is rather long and not always successful, which in the case of finding a suspect innocent or guilty, can be riveting, but over money, tends to lose some of it's edge. There's a particularly painful and almost pointless scene in a rented hotel boardroom where Travolta asks for a preposterous sum of money that he feels is justified, but he didn't even tell his partners about before hand (really? They put everything they had in this case and they didn't even know what he was going to ask for???) - and of-course the Goliath law firms say no. There's another equally painful scene where the judge (John Lithgow) knows and is friendly with the defendant lawyers and kind of belittles Travolta a little bit. The legal aspect was a bit heavy handed and the loss in trial, disappointing but not surprising. This film lacks the legal edginess and surprises of a few good men - as one example.But what it lacks in legal drama, it makes up for in human interaction. A half dozen scenes in this film are precious to me. John Travolta telling (I forget which one) "this isn't our kind of case" and the other lawyer, I think Tony Shaloub says "if you don't want to take it you tell her" - in effect, you tell the woman who's son died that this isn't our kind of case.His drive up and him stopping at the river - he only stops cause he got a ticket, but you can tell he's thinking. considering his options. He sees dollar signs when he sees the big companies that ultimately own the small company that did the polluting, but he also seems to care. He doesn't just take the case for money - at least, that's what I read into the river scene.Travolta talking to the witnesses is also very real and well done, as they don't trust the big city lawyer and they don't want to betray their company, but beneath it all, they are honest and want to do the right thing - one witness played effectively by James Gandolfini, who I can't help thinking "there's Tony Soprano" whenever I see him on screen.Then there's the frustration with the environmental research team that wants millions of dollars to run tests and properly survey the flow rate of any pollutants released), played brilliantly if briefly by Stephen Fry.And the tension between Travolta and his fellow lawyers as he's pushing the firm towards bankruptcy, some brilliant interactions with William H. Macy and Tony Shaloub. While much of the movie was dramatized the the legal points, more blunt than sharp, it's the interactions and the overall story. Even Travolta's bankruptcy hearing with Cathy Bates was very human. It's the interactions that make this movie and that draw me back to re-watch it when I see it on cable. The parts are bigger than the whole.The whole story has a good guys win in the end, ending too, which almost feels anti-climactic the way it's played out, and that doesn't do justice to the real story - Anne Anderson's 20 year battle, not the 3 years the law firm put into it. Still, blunt story telling and some Hollywood re-writing, warts and all, this still holds together as one of my favorites with some scenes that I can watch again and again. It's a flawed movie, but it's a flawed movie with heart and some brilliant interactions. Unlike many films that are great fun to watch but not ultimately memorable, this one moved me and inspired me to learn more about the full story. 10 out of 10.

Personal injury lawyers are often thought of as ambulance chasers for good reason - they take cases based on the wealth of the opponent and their ability to avoid getting the case thrown out rather than on its legitimate legal merits, and Travolta's character is very successful at this. His credo is that any lawyer who goes to court has failed, since his job is to settle OUT of court. The first half hour of the film sets up this world of nuisance litigation with a series of brilliant speeches that have the viewer off-center from the usual idealistic young lawyer trying to right wrongs nonsense so prevalent in legal dramas and so missing here. Yet, slowly we watch successful attorney Jan Schlichtmann (Travolta), as he pursues a big company accused of dumping chemicals, slowly evolve INTO the kind of legal crusader we have seen so often seen before, and this way some otherwise familiar courtroom drama takes on a fresh edge and provides greater interest that it otherwise might. And since the drama is based on a true story, it takes some surprising turns especially toward the end, as life often does and Hollywood does less often. An excellent script achievement and a very good resulting film.

The first thing that I don't like in this movie is that it tries to pass a moral lesson. I don't enjoy that thing on movies, it seems like the filmmakers are saying he's better than the audience and knows more. Second reason, the film runs too slowly. When a movie is interesting, he captures your attention and things happen quickly, which is not the case here. Other than that, the film tries to reach it's climax, but unfortunately, fails. It's like nothing much really happens throughout the whole "mistery".The good thing in this movie is the acting. Many actors I've never heard about act better than many current Hollywood. Also, the subject is interesting and so would be the movie if better directed and written.

If you go into this expecting an exciting, edge of your seat legal thriller type of movie you;re going to be disappointed. I watched this twice. The first time because from what had been described, that's what I was expecting - and I was disappointed. But I decided to give it another chance, reflecting more on the moral of the story and the characters. Using this lens, I wasn't disappointed.John Travolta put on a pretty good performance as Jan Schlictmann, a personal injury lawyer who, although unenthused at first, takes on a case involving environmental contamination that has caused several children in Massachussetts to die of leukemia. Basically, he takes it on because he discovers that there are two huge corporations he could get money from, and that's one moral of the story: personal injury law is less about the victims who've been hurt and more about the money that can be made. IN fact, the very opening of the movie establishes that well, as Schlictmann (in a narration by Travolta) describes who the preferred victims are, based on how much money you can expect to make off them, and children are at the bottom of the list. Schlictmann belongs to a small but pretty successful law firm that doesn't accept cases unless they know they can win, since that's the only way they get paid. The whole point of this type of practice, we're told, is to avoid trials and get big settlements. His colleagues doubt the wisdom of accepting this case but go along with it, until Schlictmann loses his "perspective" in two way: he actually starts to care about the victims, declining large settlements because they're not enough, and, faced with a degree of contempt from the big law firms he's going up against, he decides he has to prove himself. The result is disaster. The firm and all the partners go broke, even after a settlement is made, because what they get doesn't come close to covering their costs, and the families are disappointed because they didn't really care about money - they wanted an apology and a clean-up.Although not especially exciting, the movie is well-paced and interesting, and includes a solid supporting cast, including folks like Robert Duvall, William H. Macy and Tony Shalhoub. I found the end a bit anti-climactic. Hard to believe you could feel sympathy for an ambulance chaser, but by the time the movie ends, I really wanted Schlictmann to win. Instead, he ends up totally destitute - telling a bankruptcy judge that he's left with $14 and a portable radio. He wants to continue the case but doesn't have the resources, so he turns everything over to the EPA. They do take the case on - and win - but Schlictmann is long gone by the time that happens.Since this was a true story, it was nice to see the companies forced to pay up, and somewhat uplifting to learn that Schlictmann switched from personal injury law to environmental law. And, as much as I wanted him to succeed in this case in the end, it is a true story, so the end was what it was. A pretty good movie all in all. 7/10