Dark Waters

Written by Mario Correa

Based on the article “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare” by Nathaniel Rich

Directed by Matthew Michael Carnahan

Rating: 🔥 That’s hot

Robert Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) was an attorney at a major firm in Ohio when a new case was quite literally dropped in his lap. Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp) was a cattle farmer in West Virginia who began to notice health irregularities in his herd after DuPont, a well-known chemical corporation, purchased the property adjacent to his farm and turned it into a landfill. What ensues is a true story of the dangers of forever chemicals, corruption within the Environmental Protection Agency, and how hard and fastidiously you must persist to see justice against a corporate powerhouse.

This is a movie that every American should see. If you don’t find yourself ransacking your kitchen in a witch hunt to find and dispose of Teflon, I’ll be shocked. The story that is told in this film is one that desperately needs to be told. The film is based on the article The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare, and I highly recommend reading the article for yourself. Too often individuals and small towns struggle to have their voice heard when they are speaking out against powerful companies, many of whom are the lifeblood of the local economy, but I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for these voices to be heard.

While the story told in this film is incredible, I found some of the more technical aspects of the film to be a bit tedious. Anne Hathaway plays the spouse Sarah Bilott and I found her character to be underdeveloped so severely that she came across as a whiney mom who didn’t support her husband, possibly because of some resentment that she gave up her own career as a lawyer to stay home and raise their children. I have a hard time buying the character and found it regrettable that she came across so weak when we know that she had to be incredibly strong to withstand the pressures of such a major case for decades. Hathaway isn’t the only under-cooked character, this under-development struck equally across the board leaving us with shells of people that I wish I could have known more about. Overall, the movie is really good, but I can’t help but wish that it had been great. 

Review written by Zianna Weston