Class Action (1991 film)
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| Class Action | |
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| Directed by | Michael Apted |
| Produced by | Robert W. Cort Ted Field Scott Kroopf |
| Written by | Carolyn Shelby Christopher Ames Samantha Shad |
| Starring | Gene Hackman Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio |
| Cinematography | Conrad L. Hall |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | March 15, 1991 |
| Running time | 110min |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Class Action is a 1991 film directed by Michael Apted. Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio star; Laurence Fishburne, Colin Friels, Fred Dalton Thompson and Donald Moffat are also featured.
Tagline: A father and a daughter, divided by a case, endangered by the truth.
[edit] Plot summary
The story is about a lawsuit concerning injuries caused by a defective automobile. The suit takes on a personal dimension because the injured plaintiff's attorney (Hackman) is the father of the automobile manufacturer's attorney (Mastrantonio). The central premise of the film is roughly analogous to the controversy surrounding the Ford Pinto.
The auto manufacturer in the film also utilizes a "bean-counting" approach to risk management, whereby the projections of actuaries for probable deaths and injured car-owners is weighed against the cost of re-tooling and re-manufacturing the car without the defect (exploding gas tanks) with the resulting decision to keep the car as-is to positively benefit short term profitability.
