TV REVIEWS : ‘The Good Fight’: Likable Isn’t Enough

Christine Lahti does another one of her solid trademark career-woman turns in “The Good Fight” (tonight at 9 on Lifetime), a fairly unchallenging, feel-good TV movie in which she’s a sympathetic lawyer taking on a tobacco corporation in a David-and-Goliath fight over a young snuff user’s sad cancer case.

Lest she go this quixotic quest alone, Lahti also reignites some passion with her attorney ex-husband (Terry O’Quinn).

Her son’s best friend (Adam Trese) has been diagnosed with terminal cancer in the mouth; after some initial obligatory you-can’t-fight-the-system balking, she agrees to go after the company that introduced him to chewing tobacco, even quitting her law firm and her lover to go indie in the process. Her ex is so impressed by this show of idealism that he returns to the fold to work with her on the case, and to make a case for recoupling.

O’Quinn makes a terrific suitor-redux, as warm here as he was faux -warm in the “Stepfather” pictures. (He does a nifty little business with a $100 bill in front of a team of opposing lawyers that’s worth tuning in for.) And Lahti once again plays nobility about as well as anyone could.

The script doesn’t give their tenuous dance of reunion nearly enough interesting steps, though. And the court case itself is completely sans surprises, except for one irrelevant twist involving O’Quinn’s other ex-wife.