That was an excellent one.

Excellent, a Must See

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

The first questions I ask in reviewing a film are "was it a story worth telling", and "was it a story well told." Given the artists involved in making the Rainmaker, it should come as no surprise that this film gets a solid yes on both counts. John Grisham (author of A Time to Kill, The Firm, the Client, etc.) is one of the hottest novelists writing today, and Francis Ford Coppola (Godfathers I & II, Apocalypse Now, The Outsiders) is one of the great directors of the last twenty years. I knew Grisham had crafted a story worth telling when I read his novel. Fortunately, Coppola handles the material well and turns out one of the best adaptations of a Grisham novel yet.As is the case in many of Grisham's novels, the hero is a young struggling lawyer just out of law school. But in the Rainmaker, young Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon) is stuck with a law firm that specializes in ambulance-chasing and haunting the halls of hospitals in search of potential clients. When the head of the firm runs afoul of the law, Rudy joins forces with self-described "para-lawyer" Deck Shifflet (Danny DeVito), and the pair strike out on their own.Their only real client is Dot Black (Mary Kay Place) whose son, Donny Ray, is dying from leukemia. Donny Ray needs a blood transfusion, but the insurance company has refused to cover it. This sets the stage for a real David v. Goliath showdown, with Danny DeVito almost stealing the show as the "sling-carrier" for our 20th century David. John Voight plays Leo F. Drummond, the insurance company's attorney, and does an excellent job of making it easy for us to dislike him and the company he represents. Claire Danes plays a battered wife-and eventual love interest for young Rudy-in a subplot that seems a bit hurried and underdeveloped at points.One of the things that makes this movie so enjoyable is its smallness. In an era of star vehicles and special effects thrillers, it's a welcome change to watch a film that is simply a good story well-told. There is no over-the-top super performance, and there are no dazzling special effects, but the film is chock-full of solid performances by excellent actors (including Danny Glover, Teresa Wright, Randy Travis, and Roy Scheider). Coppola is known as the director who turns unknowns into stars. He seems to have continued the trend with rising star Matt Damon in the lead role. The Rainmaker is an engaging story with a timely theme, and in Coppola's hands becomes a story well-told.

Most good courtroom dramas and legal movies deal with murder. Those are just simply the most fun ones to see. The ones that do not deal with murder have to be extra great for everybody to like it. This is one that is simply that good without the need of murder. This is based on the 1995 novel by John Grisham of the same name. I'll have to admit, I did not like the novel. It was too boring with too many subplots and just dragged on about nothing. What Grisham bored me with, Coppola condenses in a way that I wish Grisham wrote in the first place. This features a star-studded cast (Matt Damon, Claire Daines, Danny DeVito, Jon Voigt, Danny Glover, Teresa Wright, Mickey Rourke, Roy Scheider) that is bound to make this movie that much more enjoyable. The movie is about recent law-school grad, Rudy Baylor (Damon) who is assigned to a case involving a poor family suing a wealthy insurance company for not paying for their son's cancer treatments. The company hires a high-power law firm with years of experience with very little losses. Rudy has never even been involved in a case before. At first, the lawyers make him look bad. Then Rudy slowly turns the tables on them as he shows what the company has really been up to. That is what makes the courtroom portion so interesting. A youth fresh of of school successfully files a lawsuit in such an exciting and believable way. But it is not realistic how he is assigned a high-profile case right off the bat. In reality, Rudy would have to work for years near the bottom of a firm and slowly get to the position he is at in the film. This is not as good as most of Coppola's other movies and not 1997's best. The acting and everything might be good, but a big chunk of the movie is so gloomy and dull. But it is better than the book. Luckily, it is one of those that gets better as the minutes go. Bit by bit, the case gets more complex and Rudy tries to save the life of a woman (Daines) who's in a stormy relationship with her husband, all which make the movie a very fine watch.

The Rainmaker (1997)Stolid and solid, steady to the point of functional, and extremely mainstream. That is, here we have a somewhat sensational do-gooder kind of plot, taken from the Grisham novel, and a series of complications and good guys and bad guys fill it out. It's painfully predictable, and yet you are cheering for the underdog lawyers fighting the mean insurance industry and want to see how it ends. Even though it ends the way it has to.I love director Francis Ford Coppola's best movies. A lot. And I also wonder what goes on in his worst ones, where a personal indulgence gets in the way. Here I feel another thing kick in—mediocrity. Or fulfilling a contract. The filming is good of course, the mechanics of editing and acting are top notch. The music is a bit forced, however, and the pace is slower than necessary for the limited range of events that are shown. Matt Damon, years before his Jason Bourne stereotyping, is a recent law school grad who is instilled (according to a plain voice-over) with left-wing idealism. He falls into a shoe-string law firm with an oversized case. Classic David and Goliath. And of course he has setbacks and shows his naiveté, but perseveres, more or less, to the end (though the end itself you need to see for itself). Damon is very good. Jon Voight as the evil opposing attorney is even better, though with a more 2-dimensional role. What really pulls this movie into the mainstream in a kind of disappointing way is the way it is all told. It is what it is—well done but nothing more. It seems that the goal is to be convincing and entertaining. And so it is. Routinely. A simple comparison is "Anatomy of a Murder" which I guarantee Coppola saw before shooting this. The scenario is roughly similar—underdog lawyer against overpaid big shots, with a sidekick who does all the last minute investigative work. But Preminger (in this earlier film) had a whole bunch of things going for him that Coppola somehow skipped. First is an amazing rather than a decent leading actor (Jimmy Stewart). Second is a great score. Third is a plot that threw some real twists at you, including a defendant you didn't know whether to trust or not. Fourth you set it someplace really interesting, filled with quirks. And so on.So this movie, as solid (and stolid) as it is, just comes up short again and again. Enjoyable? Yes. As such!

With everyone today using buzz words to talk about health care legislation, this is a novel about a health insurance company scamming policyholders by refusing claims that is adapted to a screenplay for a movie that was written and filmed years before reform was on the horizon. It is extremely forward thinking for its time.The Rainmaker, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, wasn't a beautifully shot movie but it was executed well. This film holds up as it does not feel dated like many movies released around the same time. There are some movies you can tell when they came out and this is one of those films that ages very well as are not many outdated styles shown and the film was shot in a way that doesn't feel dated. By that, I mean that some movies released around that time had the same feel to them and this one felt much more like it was being played through a storyteller's eyes. There wasn't much flair involved in the filming but it didn't need that. Nothing was creative about the way it was shot but it worked.The casting of this film was great as each player delivers a fantastic performance top to bottom. A perfect example of this is that Dean Stockwell is only in this film for a short period of time and he delivers quite a performance given the limited amount of time on screen. Matt Damon works as the do-good attorney in a sea of snakes. Danny DeVito is about as good as he gets in this film. Coppola could have done a bit more with the framing of the film to work with DeVito's size but that is the only problem with the performance.The movie isn't perfect because there are quite a few issues with certain lines and regardless of how good DeVito and Voight are, there are some cheesy and predictable lines that they are forced to deliver that drag the movie down a little. The film could have done more with the given novel it had to work with but there is only so much that can be done to adapt a novel into a film. It will never be a perfect interpretation of the novel unless this film was done in the same way as The Stand or The Hobbit. You cannot please everyone and I think The Rainmaker did a good job with this story.