Tuesday, October 27, 2009

THE RAINMAKER (1997)

“What’s the difference between a lawyer and hooker?”
-“A hooker will stop
screwing you after you’re dead.”

“Every lawyer at least once in every
case feels himself crossing a line he doesn’t really means to cross. It just
happens. And if you cross it enough times it disappears forever and then you’re
nothing but another lawyer joke; just another shark in a dirty water.”

Based on best selling novelist John Grisham’s legal drama and Directed by none other than great Francis Ford Coppola, the film tells the story of an amateur young lawyer Rudy Baylor’s honest and sincere struggle to win a humanitarian case of a mother who paid every single buck to a giant insurance company which refuse to offer insurance cover of her lost single young leukemia patient boy. He’s fighting the first case of his life against corrupt law sharks of Tennessee and it’s almost next to impossible case to win pitted with the forces that has power and money in their pocket and know how to reverse the dice.

Grisham told the insider’s story of law firms and insurance nexus. Having an insurance case is big booty for law firms since it gives them one third sum of that insurance policy after winning. Big sharks have their own Para-lawyers who used to search the targets among public hospitals and get their signs either by hook or crook. It’s world where rich and powerful lawyers have their close connections with judges doing favor to them.
Second important part of the film is the slow transformation of a young and sincere lawyer, from a struggling sincere boyish lawyer working under the shadow to a determined mature and smart lawyer fighting the case to expose the corrupt and protect the dignity and ethics of the legal profession against strongest odds.

Apart of well restrained emotional and professional act of Matt Damon, the movie also boasts of two powerful supporting performances from Danny De Vito as constantly gorging, smart & supportive hand of Rudy and Jon Voight as Leo Drummond, the expensive, shrewd and accent savvy Insurance firm lawyer. Personally it’s my favorite Jon Voight character. Apart of admirable and promising Matt Damon, he’s another reason why I watch the film after a long time.

Worth watching.

Ratings-8/10

No comments: