Superbly executed

Rating: Null/10 (12 July 2000)

Well, at first Julia Roberts' character annoyed me. She was completely devoid of tact. An early scene in the movie in which Ms. Brockovich goes through a trial quickly reveals most of this negative side and although you understand that she's not in a very good position in her life, you don't have an overwhelming amount of sympathy for her, which is good. The rest of the film reveals that, despite her flaws, she's quite a humanist and will fight brutally to get what she believes is justice; not only that, but her flaws make her a very interesting and entertaining character.
Unlike more complex law dramas, this film doesn't really get into what the true meaning of "justice" really is or any of that philosophical stuff, but then again it doesn't need to. The story is pretty straightforward, and it's told in a very elegant way. There are a few holes, such as why it seems as though Ms. Brockovich doesn't reveal to her family that she's *helping* people (as opposed to merely working 24/7) until near the end of the film, as well as a few other odd breaks in communication, but nothing major.
Another thing that sort of annoyed me was the way that Ms. Brockovich is portrayed as the "genius" behind the whole case and basically does all the work while everyone else putzes around. But hey, what can one expect from a Hollywood melodrama.
For me, the most interesting things about the film are definitely the characters portrayed by Roberts, Eckhart, and Finney. They're all very human, and reveal some interesting things about a person's appearance (including their manner of speaking) versus what they're really like, beyond a merely superficial level. In particular, I like how the movie makes a point of implying how much of an illusion cuss words are, how little they tell us about a person who uses them, and the way that someone who never uses them at all and speaks in the most eloquent manner can be hundreds of times more cruel and immoral than someone who uses them dozens of times in a single sentence.