Mark Ruffalo plays Robert Bilott, who tried to sue the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont for their contamination of a small town in West Virginia.
Anne Hathaway portrays his wife, Sarah, and Tim Robbins plays his boss Tom. Ruffalo is extremely convincing and hugely sympathetic in the main role. You really feel every emotion he expresses.
Jeff Bridges is a widowed college professor who begins investigating his suspicious neighbours (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack), who appear to be mixed up in a terrorist plot. It’s tense and fairly gripping but sadly goes completely off the rails towards the end. Once the big twist is revealed, very little of the story seems credible. There are simply too many coincidences and assumptions for things to have worked out the way Tim Robbins’ character planned. I felt cheated and quite angry.
It’s a shame, because there are lots of good things about the film. Bridges is compelling and as watchable as always. There is an excellent jump scare, brilliantly framed. And I like Hope Davis, as the professor’s former graduate student.
Three Boston-based childhood friends are reunited in unhappy circumstances. They discover how the events of their youth have shaped their lives and relationships, and continue to do so as events play out in the present day.
Sean Penn is the gangster-like Jimmy Markum. Tim Robbins is Dave Boyle, who has become a damaged, haunted man after being abused as a child and now finds himself the prime suspect in the killing of Jimmy’s daughter. Meanwhile, Kevin Bacon is a detective named Sean Devine (assisted by a further detective played by Laurence Fishburne).
The performances are hugely credible, leading to an unbearably tense couple of hours as this painful human tragedy plays out.
I like the way it’s deliberately paced slowly to mirror the slowness of prison life. You can feel the decades dripping past, but it’s never boring. I also like the way it’s uplifting without being trite or sentimental. Indeed, there’s plenty of violence to balance any cuteness.
Tim Robbins has a quiet magnetism about him. He says little but he makes every word count.
I also like the way that the escape itself makes up only a tiny part of the overall drama. The real story is about incarceration and friendship.
