Erin Brockovich
2000 · Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Original language: English
- drama
The story
A twice-divorced mother of three who sees an injustice, takes on the bad guy and wins -- with a little help from her push-up bra. Erin goes to work for an attorney and comes across medical records describing illnesses clustered in one nearby town. She starts investigating and soon exposes a monumental cover-up.
What it’s like
Warm, sun-washed Californian daylight spills through the windows of cramped offices, strip-mall parking lots and kitchen tables stacked with case files, and Steven Soderbergh frames it all with a loose, restless handheld energy that keeps the camera close to its characters. The palette leans on dusty desert ochres, faded pastel interiors and the cheap bright colours of everyday suburban life, while the score is light and bouncy, all guitar and soft rock that gives the mood a breezy, scrappy confidence. Its vibe is brash but big-hearted: rough-and-tumble, funny and quietly fierce, with the pace of a fast-talking courtroom comedy that still stops for moments of real tenderness. Its heroine is a single mother with more nerve than money, shifting from scrappy outsider to a woman whose stubbornness becomes a kind of moral force, while the people around her slowly come to trust her. Violence is absent, and the stakes are illness and contamination rather than gore; the tension is social and legal, with some profanity, a brief sexual aside and the sting of cruelty from those who dismiss her. It suits a Sunday afternoon, a comfort rewatch or a late evening with a glass of wine, and it is for people who want a crowd-pleasing underdog story with heart, humour and a strong female lead.
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