It s a strange thing about the coming attractions trailers they show before a movie comes out. Most of them promise more than the movie delivers. Michael Apted s Class Action is an exception; the trailer seems to promise a formula plot - a father and his daughter, both lawyers, on opposing sides in court, trading legal arguments and cliches. The movie is indeed about the father and the daughter, but in ways we didn t anticipate, with surprising intelligence and empathy.
The movie stars Gene Hackman as an aging radical who shaped his politics in the 1950s (he proposed to his wife after spotting her mouthing McCarthy is a weasel in the gallery during the Army-McCarthy hearings). He specializes in defending underdogs and attacking the establishment. His daughter, played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, is a child of more materialist decades, and wants to become a partner in a big corporate law firm. Father and daughter find themselves on opposing sides in a case involving a giant au