
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 16, 1991                   TAG: 9103160339
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`CLASS ACTION' IS GLOSSY AND WELL-ACTED

"Class Action" begins with a high-concept premise and then gets down to the business of becoming both a satisfying courtroom drama and a look at the prickly relationship between a father and daughter.

Gene Hackman plays Jedidah Tucker Ward, a hard-driving, shirt-sleeves lawyer who specializes in representing the little guy.

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio plays Margaret Ward, his daughter. She represents everything her father opposes. An ambitious member of a powerful firm, Margaret specializes in representing the big boys. Her preference for powerful corporate clients isn't accidental. Margaret is harboring some heavy resentments over her father's past philandering and the hurt he brought her mother. That, despite the fact that the mother (Joanna Merlin) has forgiven the egotistical Jedidah is suing for family harmony.

Jedidah agrees to take a particularly disturbing civil case; a man was horribly disfigured and his family killed when his car was struck from the rear and burst into flames.

Margaret's firm represents the manufacturer and is assigned to the defense. It's everythingshe has been waiting for, a chance at a partnership on the one hand an opportunity to beat her father in public on the other.

"Class Action" isn't ambitious or particularly deep but it's glossy, well-acted and agreeably free of excesses.

The villains work on a more subtle level than most of the corporate criminals we see on film. Colin Friels is effectively arrogant as Margaret's boss and lover who tries to cover himself not through the usual mayhem but through such ordinary but odious tactics as tampering with evidence.

Hackman and Mastrantonio are solid as the squabbling Wards who can't seem to come to terms with their shared history. Merlin, Jan Rubes as an auto engineer and Larry Fishburne as another lawyer give effective support that fleshes out the script by Carolyn Shelby, Christopher Ames and Samantha Shad. Michael Apted ("Coal Miner's Daughter") is a capable director who handles the material well. He doesn't grandstand and there's no intrusion of self-conscious style.

"Class Action" doesn't stretch the genre but it doesn't short change it either. `Class Action': 1/2 Twentieth Century-Fox release at Tanglewood Mall Cinema (989-6165). Rated R for language and sexual content; 110 minutes.

by CNB