...engaging subject matter that’s employed to deliberate yet mostly compelling effect...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 3, 2024

Brilliantly understated performances, flashes of wit and a heartbreaking true story aren't quite enough to make this movie memorable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 14, 2022

A wonderful ride but an ultimately unfulfilling destination.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 26, 2021

There's much to enjoy in A Civil Action.

| Apr 2, 2019

A richly acted - see especially Robert Duvall's dreamy-fox opposition lawyer - subtly suspenseful, blessedly unmoralizing morality play.

| Apr 1, 2019

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 7, 2011

This is a case in which the material really is better served in book form.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 22, 2009

The movie becomes one more David-and-Goliath morality play.

| Original Score: C- | Jul 30, 2007

Based on a true story, this is an intelligent legal thriller, very much in the mode of 1970s issue-oriented films, that may be too subtle and complex for the damands of today's market.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 1, 2006

Delivering the verdict two thirds into the movie is anti-climactic, while Schlichtmann's belated atonement feels beside the point.

| Feb 9, 2006

While Travolta is passable as Schlichtmann, it is the outstanding work from Duvall, Macy and briefly Tony Shalhoub that drive the story.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 6, 2005

I expected a harder hitting indictment against the uncaring power of corporate America. Instead, we get a middlin' courtroom drama that lacks the intensity of such films as the 1982 Sidney Lumet/Paul Newman film, The Verdict.

| Apr 9, 2005

the film is slightly overlong and the ending is anti-cathartic.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Feb 28, 2005

... hints at the complex moral issues that vein the story.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 5, 2005

A legal drama that doesn't follow the usual Hollywood-John Grisham formula.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 6, 2004

neatly avoids slipping into melodrama, and despite plenty of niggling minor faults along the way the movie finally succeeds. With a more comfortably cast lead actor it could have been even more powerful.

| Jul 31, 2003

The film is so daring because it features a protagonist that we cannot and do not sympathize with.

| Original Score: B+ | May 22, 2003

My only real problem is with the script.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 8, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 7, 2002

More complex, subtle, perplexing and memorable than the usual courtroom theatrics.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 15, 2002