What’s it about?
The pluses.
The minuses.
The legal point.
Who put it together?
Who’s who?
The performances
Our verdict

But then Schlichtmann gets a speeding ticket, and from that moment on nothing is ever the same. He's racing away from rural Woburn, Boston, as fast as his precision German engine will allow, having turned down a group of locals who want to sue someone (anyone!) for the chemically toxic drinking water, when he is nabbed by a copper on a bridge. But not just any bridge, this is the bridge over the river that carries the chemical pollution that may have killed twelve of the town's children, all dead from leukaemia. Schlichtmann takes the case. And so the legal roller coaster is off and running.

What has moved Schlichtmann to do the right thing? Has he achieved an epiphany? Hell no, he's taken a look at the probable polluter and realised he may have hit the jackpot, the bottomless pockets of two well-heeled companies. We follow the case through its shocking ups and downs, wondering to ourselves why a lawyer with an ounce of sense would not settle for tens of millions when it's so easily within reach.

The lesson in this movie is absolutely clear - lawyers should not allow questions of justice, or heaven forbid questions of morality, to distract them from their clients' (and their own) best interests. And unfortunately it rings very true.

The pluses

The cast is uniformly excellent.

There is a stunning scene where the actor David Thornton describes the moment of death of his son in a car on a highway. It explains a lot without appeal to cheap sentimentality. This later leads to a shocking flashback, the car parked on the side of the road with its hazard lights flashing.

Duvall's character of Jerome Facher is a revelation. Ironically, even though he is clearly one of the bad guys, it is impossible not to like him and admire his quirky ways. But he is man grounded completely in reality, and far more than Schlichtmann, understands the true nature of the law.

The fact that it does not romanticise the legal profession - drats!

The minuses

It is impossible to translate Harr's thick text (500 pages) into a two hour film. This is not the fault of Zaillian, just a limitation of the medium. The main result is that we do not really get a handle on Schlichtmann, or what motivates him. This is far clearer in the book, where Schlichtmann is presented as a complicated and ambivalent character.

The legal point

In Australia, some lawyers offer to do work on a similar basis. It's usually advertised under the banner "No Win, No Fee". The main difference is that instead of sharing a percentage of the payout, the law allows Australian lawyers to add a premium to their fees - for example, in New South Wales, the premium is generally 25%.

If you ever have the misfortune to need a lawyer for a personal injuries claim and you're checking out the "No Win, No Fee" options. Make sure you read the agreement between yourself and your lawyer very carefully so that its crystal clear what fees you will pay and what costs you might be up for.

This is a case about "personal injuries". This is the area of law that deals with injuries (obviously!) and holding someone responsible for them. In the movie, there has been loss of life, allegedly because of toxic pollution; and the pain and suffering for the parents. What Schlichtmann is looking for is compensation, which in the law is known as "damages". The court awards a sum of money which attempts, as far as possible (obviously you can't return the use of a limb or resurrect a life) to place the injured person in the position they would have occupied had the injury not occurred. To take this sort of action, it is often necessary to show that another person or company was "negligent". In the movie, Schlichtmann wants the jury to be convinced that the companies took an unreasonable, and foreseeable, risk with the health of the local residents.

Who put it together?

Jonathan Harr wrote the wonderful book on which the movie is based. If the movie got your interest, we cannot too highly recommend Harr's long and far more detailed account of the case. The book presents a slightly more realistic, but less affable, ending in which the main players are left with the terrible aftermath of their ordeal. A gripping read. Harr's book won the prestigious National Book Award.

Who’s who

Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall) is the idiosyncratic partner in the firm that defends the owner of the tannery that has allegedly polluted the stream. He listens to a cheap radio, carries an old beaten briefcase, and lectures his students at Harvard about the ways to represent a plaintiff ("always object, all the time, always"). By far the most interesting lawyer in the film.

James Gordon (William H Macy) is the financial partner of Schlichtmann's firm, who has the sad duty to keep the money rolling in once the senior partner launches on his quixotic battle with the big boys.

Anne Anderson (Kathleen Quinlan) is the dogged resident who has lost a child to the toxic pollution and has waged a desperate battle to get a lawyer, any lawyer, to take their case.

The performances

Robert Duvall (Jerome Facher). Has Duvall put a foot wrong in his long career? He is simply brilliant here (he was justifiably nominated for an Academy Award) and quite beguiling as the crafty representative of a conservative law firm. We know nothing about Facher - it's all in his mannerisms, his face, his little homilies and occasional glimpses of his tutorials at Harvard. Duvall is in the top echelon of actors, admired by peers and public, and memorable in far too many films to detail in full. Amongst them are Westerns ("Lonesome Dove"), dramas ("Tender Mercies" for which he won an Oscar), war movies (The Eagle Has Landed"), legal intrigues (his debut in "To Kill A Mockingbird"), and "Network", "MASH", "The Natural", etc etc. And let's not forget the "Godfather" movies, the best cinema of the post-war years. He once shared an apartment with Dustin Hoffman, James Caan and Gene Hackman - guess talent rubs off. He was recently the producer, director, writer and star of "The Apostle". And by the way, he just loves to tango!

William H Macy (James Gordon) is always a wonderful character actor, who rarely seems to be out of work since he first popped up in television's "ER". More recently seen in "Pleasantville" and "Psycho". And if you saw the intriguing "Fargo", you will remember his unforgettable performance as the hapless killer and car salesman, for which he was nominated for an Oscar. He has been in Zaillian's first film, and "Mr Holland's Opus", "The Client", "Air Force One", "Wag The Dog" and "Boogie Nights" amongst others.

Our verdict

Schlichtmann thinks he is Batman, when in fact he has allowed his own unmet needs, hidden until now behind the pretty façade of plush-pile carpets and fast cars, to govern his petty decision making. As a lawyer, this reviewer found it a depressing tale, leaving the theatre wondering what the hell he was doing implicated in this dishonourable profession.

This is not to say that the film is without merit, far from it. But from the opening scenes, in which Schlichtmann wheels a quadriplegic client into a courtroom and ostentatiously offers him water and wipes his lips, all for the benefit of the jury, the reviewer felt mightily uneasy. There is much to suggest the appearance of truth in this story, and perhaps for the layperson, unacquainted with the inner workings of the law, it is entertaining enough. And it is impressive on any scale of film-making, from the crisp dialogue, better than average direction and top draw acting. But the law takes a back seat here. As Duvall's character so incisively points out, the law has no place in a courtroom, and any lawyer who believes otherwise is a fool and dangerous to his client.

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