# Rainmaker, The (1997)

### reviewed by
Curtis Edmonds

by Curtis Edmonds -- blueduck@hsbr.org

Lawyers have a saying that goes something like this: "The most important thing you can do in a courtroom is show sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made."

Matt Damon stars in The Rainmaker as Rudy Baylor, a young, sincere, idealistic lawyer fresh out of Memphis State Law School, entering the cutthroat world of the legal profession. He begins his career with a golden opportunity: a lawsuit filed by the Black family, who are struggling with an evil, heartless insurance company for coverage of a bone-marrow transplant for young Donny Ray Black. The movie -- minus some extraneous subplots -- is about how this inexperienced David battles the mind-numbingly evil Goliath of health insurance.

The Rainmaker, adapted from the John Grisham novel, occupies a black-and-white moral universe. On one side, you have the brave family, let by the gallant Donnie Ray, and represented by the young, sincere, idealistic Baylor. On the other side, you have the insurance company, represented by a cadre of high-powered lawyers (led by Jon Voight). Both the insurance company and the law firm occupy huge, well-appointed office buildings, paid for by the poor, neglected policy holders who spend good money on worthless health insurance.

The problem is that it's all a sham. I don't care how much you hate your HMO, but these conditions don't exist in the real world, they just don't. The Rainmaker has this problem: its hero is a plaintiff's trial attorney. Attorneys -- especially plaintiff's personal injury lawyers -- are not your standard heroes, they're much too flawed for that. But in order to make the hero likable, to make the audience root for him, the script gives Damon all of the good moral qualities that there are, and demonizes the opposition to the point of caricature and beyond. Damon is good to his elderly landlord, his physically battered and emotionally scarred girlfriend (Clare Danes), and sympathetic to his clients. But he's too good for his own good.

Damon has proven, with Good Will Hunting, that he's a fine actor, full of passion and intensity. Here, he's not given any opportunity to shine: his character is required to be sincere and polite, and that's all. There's no spark of energy in his performance: he's singularly listless. The only clue that we get to what's going on in his head is the voice-over narration, and even that's flat and dull. Damon's not bad in the movie -- he even gets the Southern accent down pat -- but he's the victim of a one-dimensional screenplay. I would have liked The Rainmaker a whole lot better if Damon had been able to cut loose -- to experiment with being bad and unethical and tempted by the Dark Side of the law.

The other lawyers aren't much better. Jon Voight is the lead trial attorney for the evil insurance company -- which makes its money by systematically denying every single claim on principle. Voight is fine as a sleazy, oily lawyer in the negotiation and discovery sequences, but when he gets into the courtroom, he's as bad as he can be. He foolishly goads one of the jurors (Randy Travis) into attacking him during voir dire. He is harsh and angry to the grieving Mrs. Black (Mary Kay Place). He blusters and makes bad objections during the course of the trial. When the insurance company's CEO (Roy Scheider) makes a damaging admission, he acts like someone has hit him in the solar plexus with the butt end of a pool cue. And finally, he delivers the worst closing argument in the history of cinema film. But he's not the worst lawyer in the film: Mickey Rourke, as Damon's sleazy employer, is a poorly drawn cartoon of the worst lawyer stereotypes ever.

What saves The Rainmaker are two fine performances from veteran actor Danny DeVito and veteran director Francis Ford Coppola. DeVito supplies the charming roguishness that Damon isn't allowed in this movie. He instructs the shocked Damon in the fine art of ambulance chasing, makes sure that their battered office is swept for bugs, and generally applies a counterpoint to the oppresive sense of decency and goodness that Damon is forced into portraying. When he spots a little kid with his arm in a cast on the street, DeVito does the only thing he knows to do: he hands him his card just in case there's a possible lawsuit brewing.

Coppola really saves the day, though, by providing a pervasive sense of presence. The movie was shot on location in Memphis, and there was a lot of careful thought that went into the places where the movie was filmed and the casting of extras. Rourke's combination law office and honkytonk is a wonderful visual sight gag. The down-at-the-heels houses where Damon and the Black family live look like real people actually live there. The casting choices are excellent, too. Mary Kay Place is just right as as the beleaguered Dot Black. Danny Glover has a couple of nice moments as the trial judge. The jury looks like a real jury, the lawyers look like real lawyers, and Memphis looks like something more than an anonymous concrete canyon.

Even the cars are just right. There's a beat-up 50's vintage junker in the back of the Black house where the father (who "ain't right") sits and drinks. Damon drives an equally junky hatchback filled with his worldly possessions (it's a dead ringer for the one that I drove in law school) -- and then moves up to an elderly blue Volvo. (The opposition lawyers drive sleek, German luxury cars -- another sign of their evil.)

The old adage in Hollywood used to be: If you want to send a message, call Western Union. The Rainmaker is a "message movie", plain and simple. But if you're going to send a message, it might as well be on a Hallmark card, right? The Rainmaker is lucky to have actors like DeVito and Damon, and especially lucky to have a director like Coppola, who obviously cares enough to send his very best. Unfortunately, it's not quite good enough to save The Rainmaker from itself.

    Rating:  B

    --
    Curtis "BlueDuck" Edmonds
    blueduck@hsbr.org

The Hollywood Stock Brokerage and Resource http://www.hsbr.org/brokers/blueduck/

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