Review of Dark Waters (2019) by Greatmartin — 10 Dec 2019

About half way into the film there is a 15-20 second that will have you holding your breath, sitting on the edge of your seat and waiting for the outcome. Though you have seen this scene in many movies it still catches and you wish the rest of the movie was as suspenseful.

"Dark Waters" is about a lawyer who defended big companies and now is heading a class law suit against one of the biggest--Dupont! Mark Ruffalo plays Robert Bilott who has been just made partner of a well known admired law firm. He is not the sharp, $1,000 suit-wearing guy you mostly see in movies but when a farmer from West Virginia, a friend of his grandmother, comes in with a load of video tapes and eventually shows him where he has buried a hundred of his cows, along with the organs of many, Bilott feels he has no choice and takes the case against the thoughts of other partners.

The case takes almost 20 years to be decided and we follow along how Dupont not manipulated the government but also the people. You may not have heard of PFOA but you are familiar with Teflon which is not only used in cookware and how it does kill people and disfigures babies.

This is very much a procedural movie without much dramatics but it handles 20 decades in a little over 2 hours smoothly and let's us get to know many of the characters who are real people as this film is based on a story originally written in the New York Times.

In the end credits you get to see some of the people but in the movie, along with Mark Ruffalo, the actors such as Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Pulman, Victor Garber and Bill Camp with others, do a solid job of making their characters believable.

As with many films this season "Dark Waters" runs over 2 hours and this one could have been a little tighter but director Todd Haynes had to cover 18-19 years and does it smartly.