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Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich
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Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) spreads the help-wanted ads across her kitchen table. She circles her prospects with red marker. She's ready to make her phone calls. Her make-up is carefully applied. Her clothes are neatly pressed. It's as if she believes good grooming can be detected in the sound of one's voice.
"I'm calling about the job with the great personality and great voice," Brockovich chirps enthusiastically. Her job searching generates little enthusiasm. It's true for all her calls.
"I don't have any sales experience," Brockovich tells one person. "I don't have any computer experience," she says to another. "Oh, I thought it was a local store."
The physical verve of Roberts' performance makes the initial impact in director Steven Soderbergh's rousing melodrama, Erin Brockovich. Roberts' frizzy hair explodes from her head. Clad in sheer blouses and short leather skirts, it's clear Brockovich is the type of brassy woman who flashes cleavage first and asks questions later.
Vampy wardrobe aside, it's Roberts' emotional intensity that qualifies Brockovich as her greatest screen character. Her worrisome eyes reveal Brockovich's overwhelming responsibility as a single mom. Roberts' voice is tinged with financial desperation. She has never appeared so lifelike before.
Three kids and two failed marriages have put Brockovich in financial hot water. Basically, she's broke. It's important that Brockovich wins a settlement from a car wreck that wasn't her fault. That's what she tells her lawyer Ed Masry (Albert Finney). But the courts aren't on her side. So Brockovich has a new plan for Masry. She wants a job in his law firm.
"I'm smart," Brockovich says. "I'm hard-working, and I'll do anything. I won't leave here without a job." But Masry isn't interested.
"Please," Brockovich whispers, "don't make me beg."
Brockovich tackles her law clerk job with gusto. Her legwork discovers a cover-up regarding water contamination from a Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E;) power plant in a small rural community. Brockovich leads the fight to help the California plaintiffs in a direct-action lawsuit against the powerful utility. In her eyes, it's a rare opportunity to reinvent her life.
Roberts flashes her trademark playfulness wearing a red polka dot dress and matching red shoes. It's funny how she can bend her 5-foot-9-inch frame into something that's all curves and hips. Whenever Roberts is on-screen -- which is almost every scene in the movie -- the men fade into the background.
A benevolent motorcycle boy named George (Aaron Eckhart) offers unexpected help from next door. Kurt Potter (Peter Coyote), a slick and smarmy lawyer, aims to remind Brockovich of her humble background. Only Masry -- elevated by Finney's bulldog performance -- stands his ground with his feisty legal clerk. Together, Brockovich and Masry make a likable, unlikely pair.
Soderbergh tells Brockovich's story in straightforward fashion. There is none of the narrative bending he displayed in recent movies like Out of Sight and The Limey. But Soderbergh's trademark mobility with the camera is evident. He keeps the film lively, shooting Brockovich from different distances. Light becomes a supporting player. Within the film's working-class setting, Soderbergh creates subtle beauty.
It helps that Erin Brockovich screenwriter Susannah Grant (with a tweak by veteran screenwriter Richard LaGravenese) keeps Brockovich's moral battle down-to-earth. Erin Brockovich never becomes a class soap opera like Sally Field's fight against the textile mills in Norma Rae. There is none of the threatening suspense displayed by Meryl Streep's nuclear plant worker in Silkwood. Erin Brockovich remains a true story, content with the drama of one woman trying to boost her own self-worth.
There is little mystery involved with adapting true stories like Erin Brockovich. The real drama lies with Brockovich's personal transformation.
"You are living next door to a real live beauty queen," Brockovich tells George. "I was Miss Wichita, for Christ's sake."
The core message in Soderbergh's kitchen-sink drama is that ordinary people like Brockovich can succeed if they're only given a chance.
Brockovich's legal crusade is a life-affirming lesson that requires no typical, moviemade villain to be effective. Deceit, lies and overall corporate immorality are her targets. There are no courtroom showdowns or bullying PG&E; executives to stand in Brockovich's way. A parade of nondescript lawyers emerge as Brockovich's only obstacles. Her true foes are a factory belching smoke and chemicals flowing into the ground water for the past 14 years.
Soderbergh boosts the film's sentiment by tilting Brockovich's David and Goliath story toward the 634 plaintiffs. We learn about their miscarriages, bouts with Hodgkin's Disease and excessive nosebleeds. We meet a little girl sick with cancer, who simply wants to go back to school, and a distraught husband throwing rocks at the PG&E; factory. He's just received news that his wife's cancer is spreading.
"We're going to get them, Erin, aren't we?" asks a plaintiff. "You have to promise me we're going to get them."
The key behind Erin Brockovich's display of working-class heroism is believing in Brockovich herself. Granted, it's exciting how this single mom turns into a makeshift Nancy Drew, taking water samples and dead frogs from test wells. But the real thrill comes from watching Brockovich balance her newfound career and her family. You never forget that her top priority is to take care of her kids. Her sacrifice is her time away from home.
Lives change over the course of a quiet, face-to-face talk in the film's subtle climax. There are rich emotions in small details. Suddenly you realize that legal victory is not about huge payoffs, bonus checks or new SUVs. Erin Brockovich shows that victory can be about one woman making a difference. Calls for activism are seldom this entertaining.
Roberts has been a household name for some time now. She's a true-blue movie star. My Best Friend's Wedding confirmed her status as a successful movie comedienne. It's not that she hasn't attempted drama before -- a doomed diabetic in Steel Magnolias; a paid companion to a man dying of leukemia in Dying Young; the battered wife in the suspense thriller Sleeping With the Enemy; the unsuspecting maid in the Jekyll-and-Hyde tale Mary Reilly -- just to name a few, but all these performances appear trite compared to Erin Brockovich.
Early in the film, Roberts' own larger-than-life, public persona fades away, and Brockovich the struggling single-mom takes command. Rumor and celebrity innuendo leave the auditorium. Roberts' performance is so powerful as Brockovich that you soon forget who she really is.
It's a welcome change from her previous work, last summer's romantic-comedy Notting Hill, which was just an entertaining variation on her own celebrity persona. Erin Brockovich confirms Roberts' ability to play a real character. It's evidence of a credible dramatic actress behind the showbiz gossip.CityBeat Grade: A.
