Silkwood meets Pay It Forward

Rating: 7/10 (23 October 2014)

This movie was highly predictable at best. I've seen The Insider, A Civil Action, Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal, Silkwood, and after that, you know what to expect from this movie.
Basically Julia Roberts does a very convincing and talented performance as a harried mother of three, looking for work to support her family, and is unable to find any (she often has outbursts of swearing and such) until she meets a crabby lawyer and he reluctantly hires her. Soon she finds herself in the middle of a dangerous and disturbing case involving a gas company ditching chromium into the water supply of a neighborhood where the residents are suffering from cancer, chronic nosebleeds, all that toxic waste stuff. She also meets George, a biker who at first seems sleazy but turns out to be a nice guy.
Despite amazing acting jobs and good soundtrack, this is a tiring plot done time and time again, environmental paranoia as usual. Although it's based on true events it it highly dramatized and there are various dragged out parts of the movie that could do with some editing. It also really puts corporations in a bad light; how quickly people forget that if they want products and fuel, industry has to come before the planet sometimes, whether they like it or not.
Erin Brockovich isn't bad, but it could do with some rethinking.