Cinema: Ho, Ho (Well, No)

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STARRING: John Travolta, Robert Duvall, Kathleen Quinlan OPENS: New York City, Los Angeles Dec. 25 WIDE: Jan. 8

It's always nice, at the holiday season, to see a man get religion. It's especially rewarding to see him do so in a smart, tough, yet curiously moving film like A Civil Action, which is based on Jonathan Harr's true, best-selling account of how an insanely complicated Massachusetts case involving deadly environmental pollution was endlessly litigated.

The perps are subsidiaries of two giant corporations, carelessly dumping poisonous chemicals into a small town's water supply. The victims are kids, dying of leukemia as a result. The plaintiffs are their distraught, financially hard-pressed parents. Their unlikely champion is a lawyer named Jan Schlichtmann (John Travolta), who risks all and finally loses all that he and his partners have gained through the hot, slick pursuit of ambulances, as this case turns into an obsession.

Not, thank heaven, a particularly magnificent one. Travolta and writer-director Steve Zaillian, compressing complex issues and characters with admirable craft, make it clear that greed and ego, more than compassion, drive Schlichtmann. Only when he reaches straits as dire as his clients' does he (non-melodramatically) achieve something like full humanity. Meantime, we've enjoyed a richly acted--see especially Robert Duvall's dreamy-fox opposition lawyer--subtly suspenseful, blessedly unmoralizing morality play. --R.S.

THE GENERAL STARRING: Brendan Gleeson, Jon Voight OPENS: New York City, Los Angeles Dec. 30 WIDE: Feb. 5

Writer-director John Boorman says he thinks of Martin Cahill, protagonist of The General, as a throwback to those Celtic chieftains who haunt Ireland's misty past--cunning brutes whom legend often turns into romantic rogues.

Cahill (Brendan Gleeson) was, in fact, Dublin's master thug in the 1980s, leader of a gang that pulled off a string of gaudy robberies, and also a great local celebrity. Constantly tailed by the police, he went boldly about the city but always with his face hidden, if only by his own hands. Mocking authority in this way, he enhanced his mystery, hence his power.

Until he was finally hit by the I.R.A. (to him, just more authority to affront), he was equally capable of cheekily parking on a police-station bench all night to give himself an alibi, or of crucifying a suspected informer on a pool table. Happily married, he kept his wife's sister as a mistress and sired children with both women. In this admittedly fictionalized retelling, his other reliable relationship is with an implacably pursuing detective (superbly underplayed by Jon Voight) who hates himself for succumbing to a psychopath's irresistible charm.

That's what's great about Boorman's stunningly realized black-and-white film and about Gleeson's performance, which, like Irish weather, goes from sunny to stormy without warning. Neither film nor actor tries to resolve Cahill's contradictions or anyone's feelings for him. He just-- monstrously--is, a force of nature, beyond our rational reckoning, but not, perhaps, our irrational fascination. --R.S.

AFFLICTION STARRING: Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, James Coburn, Willem Dafoe OPENS: New York City, Los Angeles Dec. 30 WIDE: Jan. 15