An interesting true story about a down-and-out lady who cracks a big case, good Julia Roberts vehicle.

Rating: Null/10 (15 August 2000)

Erin Brockovitch is a real person, who quite by "accident" (car) ends up retaining a lawyer who apparently does her no good. When she can't find a job to pay her bills, and care for her 3 children by two different former husbands, she goes back to the lawyer and refuses to leave until he gives her a job. Simply because she is very smart, and very inquisitive, she and her firm end up representing 600+ families in a hexavalent chromium pollution case.
(A detail that seemed sloppy editing or filming - we see early in the film that her "accident" is caused by the other car running a red light and broadsiding her. When she is testifying in court she says she was pulling out and he rounded a corner out of nowhere. The description did not fit what we saw.)
Anyway, Julia Roberts does her usual superior job as Erin, and Albert Finney as the lawyer. The real Erin even has a small part, playing the waitress in an early scene. It is a good story, and a well-done film, but ultimately all I can rate it is a very strong 7 of 10. No where near the impact of recent films like "Music of the Heart" or "The Insider", both based on true stories. Maybe because Erin was treated all the way through as a very "over the top" character with a dirty vocabulary, and that got tiresome.

I saw the DVD version of this movie. To me, the most interesting extra was the interview which included the real Erin and the real lawyer. Also some interesting facts on the location and shooting. Most of the extras were deleted scenes, which trimmed the running time from 3 hours 15 minutes to about one hour shorter. The DVD image is sharp and colors fine, the sound track is fine too, but nothing outstanding.