Caring too much

Rating: 6/10 (19 February 2010)

My favourite film about a corporate lawsuit is Atom Egoyan's 'The Sweet Hereafter', which features a shifty, self-hating lawyer and a tragedy where it's very unclear whether anyone is to blame, and even if they are, whether anything is to gain by holding them to account. Stephen Soderbergh's 'Erin Brockovich' is a rather different story, in which Erin (played by Julia Roberts) brings a multi-million dollar corporation to its knees through a simple combination of loving her kids, wearing short skirts, swearing a lot and above all else, by caring too much. The latter is really her trump card - whenever there's a dispute about any point in the case, the corporate lawyers are always wrong and Erin is right because she cares. The film is based on a true story, and maybe this is actually how it happened, but it certainly doesn't provide any moral ambiguity to interest the viewer. In true American style, the happy ending is that all the good characters make several million dollars.