Erin Brockovich



Starring Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhart, Conchita Farrell, Cherry Jones, Marg Hilgenberg. Directed by Stephen Soderbergh.

Erin Brockovich (Roberts) has three kids, two ex-husbands and no money. After yet another unsuccessful job interview, Erin gets blindsided by a speeding doctor. She contacts low-rent lawyer Ed Masry (Finney), and goes for a lawsuit, but she loses. With the same problems, new medical and car bills, and still mad at Ed for getting her hopes up, she barges into his office and strongarms him for a filing job. When her original babysitter becomes unreliable, a bearded biker next door George (Eckhart) volunteers to babysit. The kids love him, and despite her best judgement in getting involved with another man, she begins to as well.

When setting up a file for a particular case, Erin comes across a real estate deal with medical records inexplicably included. Intrigued, Erin drives down to middle-of-nowhere California to talk to the client, and discovers the client and her husband are quite sick. And so are many of her neighbours. She looks across the desert and sees the hulking Pacific Gas and Electric plant just across the way. She sneaks into the local Water Registry office, looks at the water testing data, and discovers that a very poisonous chemical was discovered in the water. The residents were told the chemical is actually good for them. Ed is initially apprehensive in taking on a large corporation, but with Erin's "vocal" encouragement, he relents, and they begin their long, time-consuming fight with the corporate giant on behalf of over 600 clients.

Based on the true David-Goliath story of Erin and Ed suing PG & E, this is not your typical Julia Roberts movie. Which is good. Here, the character of Erin Brockovich is a somewhat bitter, foul-mouthed fighter who says just about anything that comes into her head. A key moment involves George deciding he doesn't want to be just the maid and free babysitter, and asks Erin to choose him or her all-consuming job. She snaps back, that her two ex-husbands never asked her what she wanted, and left her to take care of the kids alone with no support. Erin suggests that she did what others wanted for too long, and would now be doing what she wanted, and that he could show he was different from them by staying. She doesn't mention why George should pay for her ex-husbands' past behaviour, or why treating him like her ex's treated her was an improvement. But again, Erin's character is not made more heroic or sugar-coated - she is a real person. The treatment parallels that of Jeffrey Wigand in the excellent The Insider, where a somewhat normal and flawed person does very good things.

Soderbergh tells the story simply, without gimmicks or undue histrionics. The script excels in keeping the sentiment to a minimum, and snappy one-liners keep the events moving. The indie director has been accused of selling out to Hollywood, but there's nothing wrong with going Hollywood if you make a good movie. Hollywood needs more good movies, and talented directors to make them. And this is a good movie. It is not simply about a plucky young heroine trying to save the world. It is very much about the constraints of single parenthood, poverty and lack of education, and while Erin hit the jackpot overcoming her constraints, many others are not so lucky. There are some implausibilities. How many bosses would laugh off the kind of abuse Erin foists on Ed on a regular basis? How many guys, much less bikers, would take the kind of abuse and lack of appreciation George takes? And the bad guys are too often portrayed simplistically as bumbling, unfeeling shisters. Although, maybe that was the reality. The ending where Erin receives her cheque is also done with an unnecessary Hollywoodish touch.

Roberts is as good as she's ever been, never softening the characters negative qualities, and showing real emotion and intensity. She's been nominated for Academy awards before, but this might be her first really Oscar worthy performance. Finney is solid as the rumpled lawyer who takes a big chance in taking a case which could bankrupt him because it was the right thing to do. Eckhart very nicely portrays the sensitive biker, a character very different from his outstanding ruthless corporate goon from In The Company Of Men. The rest of the cast is largely that of unknowns realistically portraying people not larger than life. Erin Brockovich is well worth seeing.




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