A Pretty Woman Takes Down A Big Utility

Rating: 10/10 (30 August 2007)

In all the years that Frank Capra gave his populist films, none of his heroes were women. Back then it was the traditional roles with the men doing the heavy lifting and the women in support as wives and mothers so the men could slay the dragons.
Frank Capra might never have given us a populist heroine, but I think he would have loved Erin Brockovich as much as I did. Although Albert Finney is the lawyer who took on the power Pacific Gas&Electric for the residents of Hinkley, California, the legwork (and what a pair of legs) was done by Julia Roberts.
The true story of former beauty queen Erin Brockovich is one of the best roles for a female player in the past ten years and Julia Roberts was so right for the part. Beauty is a start for this part, but Ms. Roberts is also a single mother raising three kids who literally browbeats her way into a job with a law firm headed by Albert Finney that lost a case where she was a plaintiff.
People all her life, and probably the men she was involved with never took her seriously because of her beauty. As Roberts got deeper and deeper into the case involving toxic chromium poisoning from a plant in Hinkley, she felt a lot more self worth and very much empowered due to the good work she was involved in. As she explains to current boyfriend Aaron Eckhardt in my favorite scene in the film, when she goes to Hinkley on any her firm's business, it's not a beauty queen that the people there are seeing, but a savior of sorts.
Roberts puts her heart and soul in both her work and as mother. Some of her best scenes are her domestic ones with her three kids. She's not without weaknesses, she does have a tendency to snap judgments and she's not the most diplomatic of people at times. But a good heart and a good work ethic cover a multitude of sins.
Unlike so many Oscar winning films, Erin Brockovich got a March release in 2000 not a release late in the year to keep the film fresh in Academy voters minds. Obviously no one thought of this film as Oscar caliber. Yet word of mouth spread about the film and it got several nominations including Best Picture, Best Director for Steven Soderbergh, Best Supporting Actor for Albert Finney and others. And it was a winner for Julia Roberts for Best Actress of 2000.
Erin Brockovich was one of my favorite films for the new century and I think it will please every one who sees it.