A Civil Action (1998)

Few films depict the procedural war of attrition in civil tort litigation quite like this adaptation of Jonathan Harr's non-fiction account. John Travolta's personal injury team faces ruin through the punishing costs of pre-trial depositions, hydrogeological evidence testing and rule-bound motions to dismiss. The eventual reckoning arrives via regulatory referral and dry judicial procedure, long after the lawyers have exhausted their funds.