Samudio Kris Anne Business Ethics

BSA-4 Wed. 1-4

CLASS ACTION A FILM REVIEW

"Class Action," an ethical dilemma worked out through a juicy family feud. The mores of the
'60s weigh in against those of the '80s when a ruthless young corporate lawyer takes on her
flower-powered father in a San Francisco courtroom. Grounded in a good cause but never puffed
up or preachy, the father-daughter drama transcends the issues. Class Action, father and daughter
meet as adversaries in the courtroom, not for laughs, as in "Adam's Rib," but for what is
supposed to be human drama. Jedediah represents the plaintiff, a man badly burned in an
automobile accident, and Maggie the defendant, the manufacturer of the allegedly defective
automobile.

The Class Action movie sounds like yet another glib contest between the idealistic ’60s and the
pragmatic ’90s. The case Jed and Margaret are working on involves Argo, an auto manufacturer
that may have let a dangerously faulty model on the road. Jed’s client is a wheelchair-bound man
whose car, made by Argo, blew up on him; the suit claims that there was a pattern of such
explosions and that the Argo executives knew about it. Margaret is defense attorney for the
company. It’s easy enough to see where the case is heading, but what holds us is the texture of
the legal process and the way that Hackman and Mastrantonio play off each other.
Mastrantonio, whose heart-shaped face culminates in a diamond-point chin, has a sparkling
confidence and verve here. We’re meant to see that her scarily efficient single-mindedness about
the law has, in its way, descended directly from her father’s leftist ardor. There is a tension
between Margaret’s ripe grin and her hyper assertive professional style. At times, she is like Julia
Roberts as a career superwoman — and with the right part, Mastrantonio, too, could become a
major star. Hackman, once again, takes a no-big-deal role and brings to it a bit of magic. Jed is a
great lawyer, but his dedication to his clients cannot mask the egocentric pleasure he takes in
playing the Great Legal Savior. Hackman, beneath his usual crinkly-eyes warmth, paints Jed’s
flaws vividly, making the character’s heroism seem even more human.

This movie won't put you to sleep. Yet it vanishes from the memory as fast as anything dreamed
in the conventional manner.