Dark Waters - important without exactly being riveting

REVIEW: Dark Waters, Cineworld Cinemas, (12a), (127 mins).
Dark WatersDark Waters
Dark Waters

Dark Waters is an important film and a shocking film – neither of which necessarily makes it a great film.

It’s a film you will be glad you have seen and certainly a film we all ought to see, but as a corporate thriller, it’s probably just a little lacking in thrills. Definitely worthy, and certainly, it’s quietly absorbing. But riveting? Probably not. At times the waters are just a little turgid. It’s an overly patient slow-burner which needs to burn just a little more quickly.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

All of which, of course, is comfortably outweighed by the significance of the message it conveys: namely, that big business, corrupt and evasive, will poison us all if it thinks it can get away with it.

And in this particular instance, big business certainly would have got away with it had it not been for the dogged, painstaking determination of one man in this real-life tale: business attorney Robert Bilott, the lawyer who puts everything on the line to switch sides and become the little man taking on the big conglomerations.

Bilott – superbly played by Mark Ruffalo – gets an unexpected visit from a couple of hick farmers whose cows are dying, victims to hideous tumours and all sorts of other nasties. They are convinced the nearby DuPont chemical works are poisoning the water – despite their mission statement that they are aiming to make the world “a safer, healthier and better place to live.”

Initially reluctant, Bilott, however, finds himself drawn to dig deeper and soon finds himself facing corruption, collusion and shameless disregard on an appalling scale. DuPont’s boss seems to take it as a personal affront that Bilott is even interested... and so the obstruction and heel-dragging begin.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The film covers some 17 years, with Ruffalo powerfully and convincingly portraying Bilott as a modern-day every-man kind of hero. Movingly, he suggests the personal cost – the tensions at home and the stress-induced tremor.

DuPont’s tactic is to bog Bilott down in too much information, which is kind of what happens to the film itself. Director Todd Haynes has gone for quiet, understated anger in telling his tale.

Maybe he doesn’t quite get the balance right.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad