Reviewing a movie 20 years following its release is a curious task, as it entails a reflection on its content not merely as film, but as a comment woven of how the movie compares against similar films, and also films of the era from which it originates. "Class Action" serves two masters - those of courtroom drama, and those of family drama. It serves neither especially well.
Courtroom drama is often used as a metaphor for a broader morality play, weighing different varieties of good and evil, or merely right versus wrong. Done well, courtroom drama is capable of producing authentic conflict that forms the basis of outstanding films, such as "A Few Good Men" and "Presumed Innocent," where the core conflict reflected a measure of unease about the kind of justice the films offered, and asking the viewer to consider whether their results were right. "Class Action," however, aspires to no such heights, tossing up a legal softball in the form of a thinly-veiled fictionalization of the famed 1970's Ford "exploding Pinto" design.
With the legal drama paper thin, the characters that tell the story rapidly become strawmen caricatures, and hollow becomes the family conflict between Gene Hackman's Jedediah Tucker Ward and his daughter Maggie, played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Where Hackman's character is a clichéd 60's counterculture throwback, Mastrantonio's is the equally clichéd corporate attorney. The story allows for no subtleties, and the conflict is decided before the first frame is filmed.
The film's middle third delves into too many tightly-shot, overwrought emotional introspections, and Mastrantonio looks at times exceedingly uncomfortable in the role of an attorney. One can't help but wonder if the cast overcompensates for what it knows is a contrived story, trying to manufacture interesting conflict where the film's end-game can, minus the details, reasonably be predicted.
On its face, the drama between Mastrantonio and Hackman is marginally compelling, but so heavily directed by Michael Apted it makes one wish the characters hadn't been drawn in such a starkly one-dimensional manner so as to allow the viewer the chance to contemplate who holds the moral high ground in their personal life, and, more broadly, in their opposite-ends perspectives in the legal system. As it is, a few scenes of anger and rage, militated by the superfluous introduction of the death of Maggie's mother along the way, merely serve to insist the viewer agree with the film's predetermined conclusions. The result leaves the conflict empty, and the viewer only marginally interested.
The courtroom conclusion provides for its own interesting trapdoor resolution, which won't be revealed here, and that alone does provide "Class Action" the kind of end-game pop it desperately needs. The "pop," however, isn't enough to overcome the hard characterizations that force the dramatic point, rather than allow it to form in the heart and mind of the viewer.
Courtroom drama is often used as a metaphor for a broader morality play, weighing different varieties of good and evil, or merely right versus wrong. Done well, courtroom drama is capable of producing authentic conflict that forms the basis of outstanding films, such as "A Few Good Men" and "Presumed Innocent," where the core conflict reflected a measure of unease about the kind of justice the films offered, and asking the viewer to consider whether their results were right. "Class Action," however, aspires to no such heights, tossing up a legal softball in the form of a thinly-veiled fictionalization of the famed 1970's Ford "exploding Pinto" design.
With the legal drama paper thin, the characters that tell the story rapidly become strawmen caricatures, and hollow becomes the family conflict between Gene Hackman's Jedediah Tucker Ward and his daughter Maggie, played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Where Hackman's character is a clichéd 60's counterculture throwback, Mastrantonio's is the equally clichéd corporate attorney. The story allows for no subtleties, and the conflict is decided before the first frame is filmed.
The film's middle third delves into too many tightly-shot, overwrought emotional introspections, and Mastrantonio looks at times exceedingly uncomfortable in the role of an attorney. One can't help but wonder if the cast overcompensates for what it knows is a contrived story, trying to manufacture interesting conflict where the film's end-game can, minus the details, reasonably be predicted.
On its face, the drama between Mastrantonio and Hackman is marginally compelling, but so heavily directed by Michael Apted it makes one wish the characters hadn't been drawn in such a starkly one-dimensional manner so as to allow the viewer the chance to contemplate who holds the moral high ground in their personal life, and, more broadly, in their opposite-ends perspectives in the legal system. As it is, a few scenes of anger and rage, militated by the superfluous introduction of the death of Maggie's mother along the way, merely serve to insist the viewer agree with the film's predetermined conclusions. The result leaves the conflict empty, and the viewer only marginally interested.
The courtroom conclusion provides for its own interesting trapdoor resolution, which won't be revealed here, and that alone does provide "Class Action" the kind of end-game pop it desperately needs. The "pop," however, isn't enough to overcome the hard characterizations that force the dramatic point, rather than allow it to form in the heart and mind of the viewer.