The Rainmaker:
If there is one thing we can expect from a movie based on a John Grisham novel it's star power. Tom Cruise , Julia Roberts , Gene Hackman and Sandra Bullock have each had their turn portraying a John Grisham character. Therefore it comes as a pleasant surprise that The Rainmaker offers a cast of relative unknowns and some little seen actors.
There is a lesson here: just because an actor costs 20 million it does not mean he's worth his weight in gold. The cast of The Rainmaker is like a breath of fresh air from a bunch of fresh faces. Matt Damon donates a wonderful performance which will most likely kick his career into overdrive. Heroic yet flawed , he is an imperfect hero , and underdog for the audience to cheer for.
Mickey Rourke offers his usual quiet intensity and makes the most of his five minutes of screen time. Clare Danes is the love interest / battered wife / useless sub-plot only in the movie because people cannot watch an entire movie without at least one scene of violence.
Still , she is cute as a button so we can forgive our hero for indulging his "knight in shining armor" side. Danny Devito is comic relief , something that was missing from previous Grisham movies , Jon Voight is incredibly sleazy , as usual. That's just the main cast , let's not forget an incredible supporting cast.
Danny Glover , Roy Schneider , the dying boy and his father whose names i forget. Not one bad performance during the entire movie. Like in all John Grisham movies the bad guys are , well , bad. First it was sleazy lawyers , then a corrupt government and rapists...now we have insurance companies. Ooooohh , my skin crawls at the mention of the name.
It is always a good sign when viewers actually boo the bad guys. It means we actually give a damn about their actions and the consequences of these. Luckily , we have a lawyer fresh out of law school and an assistant who flunked the class six times on the side of all that is good and mom's apple pie.
Shit. We're screwed. Actually they...well i won't give away the ending but it certainly makes you hate the insurance companies even more. All in all , an enjoyable movie with a dynamite cast...a cast that probably cost less than two or three of those bugs in Starship Troopers.
mATTHEW bRISSETTE
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews