March 17, 2000 | Your heart may start to sink when you read the words “based on a true story” – a phrase that usually portends the moral uplift and homogenized simplicity of made-for-TV trifles — during the opening moments of Erin Brockovich. But don’t be afraid, and don’t bolt for the exit. Your spirits will lift as you gradually recognize this hand-tooled, top-of-the-line star vehicle as something exceptionally rare and wonderfully satisfying, a smartly written, richly detailed and shrewdly insightful character study that also manages to be a sassy and brassy feel-good crowd-pleaser.
Credit the filmmakers for spotting the potential in a real-life Cinderella story. But give them even more abundant praise for not screwing it up. And while you’re tossing those kudos around, save a great big fistful for Julia Roberts, who infuses the title role with more down-to-earth heart and soul than high-gloss Hollywood glamour. She is, quite simply, at the top of her game in the performance of her career.
A twice-divorced mother of three young children, Erin Brockovich becomes a hero almost in spite of herself. Unschooled in law and unrefined in speech or dress, she nonetheless manages to talk her way into a clerical job with a small L.A. legal firm. It helps that attorney Ed Masry (an aptly robust Albert Finney) feels a little guilty about not getting her the big settlement he promised while handling a lawsuit stemming from a traffic accident. (Erin wasn’t at fault, but her foul-mouthed temper made her a lousy trial witness.) It helps even more than Erin isn’t exaggerating when she promises to be a hard worker: With three little mouths to feed, and a metastasizing mountain of unpaid bills, she has all the motivation she needs.
Fortunately, Erin finds encouragement and reliable childcare in the house next door: George (Aaron Eckhardt), perhaps the most affably sweet-natured biker to court a feisty leading lady since Sam Elliott charmed Cher in Mask, is more than willing to sit home with the kids while Erin fights the good fight. A good thing, too, because Erin Brockovich is the story of a woman who has little time for distractions once she starts to right wrongs.
Roberts strikes the perfect balance of prideful defiance and anxious desperation in the early scenes, winning over the audience with equal measures of rude wit and steely resilience. She plays Erin as a woman who’s totally at ease in her own skin – and, just as important, in flashy, trashy attire that would have been just as appropriate for the hooker she portrayed in Pretty Woman. Erin isn’t exactly dressing for success, but she’s not flashing for cash, either. In one of the movie’s funniest scenes – which, not incidentally, douses any expectation of May-December romantic entanglement – Erin notes how her boss is noting her cleavage, and cracks: “They’re called boobs, Ed.” To his credit, Ed is never again so obvious about his ogling.
After taking sufficient time to render Erin as a fully rounded character – in every sense of that term – the movie admiringly charts the self-realization of this wisecracking firecracker. While handling a routine real estate transaction, Erin uncovers tell-tale signs that Pacific Gas & Electric has been contaminating the water supply of a small California desert town with toxic chromium rust inhibitors. For years, Erin learns while talking to the good citizens of Hinkley, PG&E has been telling everyone in town that the chromium is harmless – is, in fact, “good” for the community.
Even the folks who have been turning up with everything from nosebleeds to cancer have been slow to make the connection between their maladies and corporate malfeasance. But they’re made to feel at ease by Erin, who instinctively knows when to ask a question, when to gently request a clarification, and when to simply be quiet and lend a sympathetic ear. With a little help from a larger law firm, and a lot prodding, investigating and smart-ass hectoring from Erin, Ed pleads – and wins – a suit jointly filed by over 600 Hinkley residents.
Working from a bracingly intelligent and often richly amusing script by Susannah Grant, director Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight, The Limey) wisely tones down the visual flash and filigree that he has employed so effectively in other recent movies. And when he does reach into his bag of stylistic tricks – a few jump cuts now and then, some hand-held camerawork here and there – the images are storytelling stratagems, not attention-grabbing flourishes.
Soderbergh is very clever when it comes to lingering just a beat or two longer than you might expect on a revealing detail. His patience serves him particularly well during a scene involving a phone conversation between George and Erin. She’s on the road again, taking depositions and encouraging plaintiffs, and she knows she’ll get home too late to say goodnight to her kids. So George brings her up to date, announcing that her youngest, a baby girl, just spoke her first word. Erin is overjoyed – and pained. Soderbergh holds the shot so we can see the tears welling up her eyes, so we can fully grasp two things: How much she wishes she could have been there, and how fervently she believes she had to be someplace else. It’s a great moment in a great performance in a great movie.
