Even factoring in the film's disappointingly gooey, TV-lawyers coda, "Class Action" is one of this week's class acts.Doctor Beverly Crusher reads a eulogy before her late grandmother's coffin at the Caldos colony graveyard, with Counselor Deanna Troi and Captain Jean-Luc Picard at her side, describing her grandmother, Felisa Howard, as a healer, and one who offers more than just a healthy body she will miss her advice, healing, and most of all, her inspiration that she has provided Crusher with through the years. Setting the absorbing legal legwork and minutiae against the local color and light fantastic of San Francisco, Apted gives this smarter-than-average script a slick look and expertly develops suspense. Though she relishes the chance to compete with her father, Maggie finds herself drawn uncomfortably into a web of nasty corporate tactics and intimate conflict of interest. So, acting (out) against the wishes of their sainted wife and mother, memorably played by sympathetic and sexy Joanna Merlin, father and daughter square off against each other, throwing sparks in the courtroom and dredging up family history after hours.
Best of all, it means going head to head with Dad on a neutral playing field, the courtroom.
Along comes the "partner express," a class action case in which Maggie would be defending an auto manufacturer charged with making exploding cars.
Maggie, who is having a sub rosa affair with her boss (played by Colin Friel, who seems to be specializing in oily execs after his turn in last year's "Darkman"), needs a splashy case to push her to the top of the crop of baby lawyers. With her timing and intelligence, Mastrantonio would make a terrific lawyer if screen roles suddenly dried up. Ambitious Maggie's '90s career drive is fueled by the rage and resentment she feels toward her father. Mastrantonio shows a subtler sort of steel as his by-the-bookish daughter Maggie, an up-and-coming attorney at a slick corporate law firm. He's an entertainer, strutting and fretting on his stage, accustomed to leaving courtrooms to standing ovations. With earthily idealistic sensibilities bred in San Francisco's Summer of Love, he's the last champion of the underdog, and tenacious as a terrier. Obnoxious and endearing, Hackman is at the top of his scene-stealing form as crusading civil liberties lawyer Jedediah Tucker Ward. The court calls the case of Gene Hackman vs. How does a father-daughter rivalry grab you? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, "Class Action," the new movie by director Michael Apted, has got a new twist. Law" and "Equal Justice" and even "The People's Court," a courtroom drama that hopes to make an appeal had better have a gimmick. But given the continuing popularity of "L.A. In these litigious and libidinous times, movies about lusty lawyers looking for love and loopholes are hotter than a jury box in July.
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