Word: schlichtmann
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...disproportionate grouping that epidemiologists call a "cancer cluster." Residents put the blame on local companies that allegedly discharged cancer-causing chemicals into the water supply. Determined to get the situation investigated and their community cleaned up, the families have called in a tall, forceful lawyer from Massachusetts named Jan Schlichtmann. He's helping Toms River fight for justice in a real-life drama brimming with heartbreak, courage and mystery...
Sound familiar? Didn't you see this on the screen just last weekend at your local multiplex? Toms River could easily be a sequel to A Civil Action, the new movie based on the best-selling nonfiction book by the same name. Starring John Travolta as Schlichtmann, A Civil Action is a compelling tale of how the federal courts chewed up and spat out the cocky lawyer and the working-class families he represented in a suit that charged large industrial polluters with contaminating the water supply of Woburn, Mass. Expenses mounted so fast that Schlichtmann lost his Porsche...
Following the events depicted in A Civil Action, a devastated Schlichtmann moved to Hawaii, opened a lighting business and vowed to give up the practice of law. After the tortures of the Woburn case, which wiped out nine years of his life, escaping to sunnier shores seemed like a reasonable response. But Hawaii held him for only three years. Now he's back East with new clients in polluted communities in New York and Massachusetts as well as in Toms River. Has he forgotten the lesson he learned? Is he hunting for another monster lawsuit that will crush him into...
...perps are subsidiaries of two giant corporations, carelessly dumping poisonous chemicals into a small town's water supply. The victims are kids, dying of leukemia as a result. The plaintiffs are their distraught, financially hard-pressed parents. Their unlikely champion is a lawyer named Jan Schlichtmann (John Travolta), who risks all and finally loses all that he and his partners have gained through the hot, slick pursuit of ambulances, as this case turns into an obsession...
...thank heaven, a particularly magnificent one. Travolta and writer-director Steve Zaillian, compressing complex issues and characters with admirable craft, make it clear that greed and ego, more than compassion, drive Schlichtmann. Only when he reaches straits as dire as his clients' does he (non-melodramatically) achieve something like full humanity. Meantime, we've enjoyed a richly acted--see especially Robert Duvall's dreamy-fox opposition lawyer--subtly suspenseful, blessedly unmoralizing morality play...