IT'S HARD TO MAKE A CASE FOR UNENGAGING `CIVIL ACTION'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

``A Civil Action,'' taken from Jonathan Harr's absorbing, nonfiction book about a precedent-setting pollution trial, is a far cry from the silly melodramatics we're accustomed to in John Grisham courtroom movies.

The film is an admirably serious and intelligent look at the legal system. Unfortunately, it's a very complicated, very tedious legal system.

The problem here isn't that adapter-director Steven Zaillian loses us in the details of what was a drawn-out, highly technical case against two large corporations. The legal issues, and even the eye-glazing scientific evidence, is presented clearly enough. What's wrong is that Zaillian, who wrote the screenplay for ``Schindler's List'' and made his directing debut with the well-regarded ``Searching for Bobby Fischer,'' fails to engage us with the material.

The book may be harder to digest than the movie, but it is correspondingly more interesting as well. In his desire to be accessible, Zaillian oversimplifies the story, resulting in a film that rarely delves below the surface.

John Travolta's lead performance is like the movie itself: deceptively rich until you realize that it really isn't. He plays personal injury attorney Jan Schlichtmann, a well-dressed, oily-haired, Porsche-speeding operator who revels in his disreputable, avaricious professionalism. He gleefully defends his ambulance-chasing ways on local radio talk shows, and claims to enjoy his status as one of Boston's most eligible bachelors.

We'll have to take his word on that last one, though, since one of the film's big failings is that it never reveals anything about Schlichtmann's personal life.

Anyway, he's initially reluctant to take on the case of eight grieving, working-class families in Woburn, Mass., who believe polluted drinking water was responsible for the high rate of leukemia among their children.

The parties most likely responsible - if, indeed, their responsibility can be proved - are small manufacturing concerns. Schlichtmann's own little firm needs big pockets to go after, since they're the type of lawyers who work on contingency and, in fact, would have to invest loads of their own money to work up the kind of evidence the case would require.

But then Schlichtmann discovers that the offending businesses are subsidiaries of giant conglomerates W.R. Grace & Co. and Beatrice Foods. Fueled by greed and arrogance, he commits his firm to taking on the big boys. And he could just beat them - except, at the most inopportune moment, the killer litigator grows a heart.

This is doubly bad news, since Schlichtmann's main opponent is an eccentric but ruthless old legal crocodile played by a serenely sinister Robert Duvall, who steals every scene as effortlessly as his character steals every advantage. The movie's other great performance comes from the always-reliable William H. Macy, who plays the Schlichtmann firm's resourceful but increasingly frazzled financial officer.

Zaillian is at his best when detailing how the good little lawyers lose everything in their increasingly lopsided confrontation with the big guns. He's less successful at delineating why Schlichtmann changes from a shrewd strategist into an obsessive crusader. Indeed, some of his moves in the movie, though clearly designed to evoke Schlichtmann's ethical redemption, just make him look stupid.

That may be the only thing ``A Civil Action'' has in common with a Grisham film. But it's not a good thing to have in common with them.

The facts

The film: ``A Civil Action'' (PG-13; language).

The stars: John Travolta, Robert Duvall, William H. Macy, Tony Shalhoub, John Lithgow, Kathleen Quinlan.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Steven Zaillian. Written by Zaillian, based on Jonathan Harr's book. Produced by Scott Rudin, Robert Redford and Rachel Pfeffer. Released by Touchstone Pictures.

Running time: One hour, 58 minutes.

Playing: Century 14, Century City.

Our rating: two and one half stars