Directing: B
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

Maybe it’s just because we are currently living in an era with such blatant injustice and corruption, being waved in front of our faces as a constant taunt every day. It just feels like more of an effort to get all riled up about a movie like Dark Waters, and this is a movie about a mega-corporation getting away with knowingly poisoning an entire community. It makes me wonder, would Spotlight have made anywhere near the same impact if it had been released in 2019 instead of 2015? That movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture and stopped just short of $100 million in worldwide grosses. Dark Waters is about just as vital a subject matter, has grossed barely $6.8 million in three weeks, and will almost certainly get no Oscar nominations at all. People are exhausted by being told what they already know: our system is not for the people. No wonder people flock to fantasies like Avengers: Endgame.

When it comes to Dark Waters, though, this leaves me in a bit of a pickle. Should you see it? Oh, definitely, yes. Will it make you feel better about anything at all? Oh, probably not.

This film starts in 1975. A brief scene of a few drunk kids getting caught swimming in a lake they shouldn’t be in, or more reasons than one. There’s a brief shot of a bare skinny dipping butt, so I guess that’s exciting. After a brief moment seeing officials on a boat shooing the kids away and then spraying the surface of the water with something from hoses that is never given any specific explanation, the timeline jumps to 1998 Cincinnati. This is the year the initial case against DuPont begins. By the end of the film we’ve reached 2012, attorney Robert Billott (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Sarah’s (Anne Hathaway) kids are teenagers, and even that’s not the end of it.

In other words, it’s a bit of a slog—and that’s the point. It’s just what DuPont wanted. Still, Dark Waters could have stood at least some tweaks of its editing. At least twice during long tracking shots, I found myself thinking about how the film, which runs at 126 minutes, would have been no worse off without these few minutes. But, cinematographer Edward Lachman (Carol) needs some time to make things look interesting. He actually does a good job, all things considered, but there’s only so much you can do with a movie largely set in law firm meeting rooms. Every once in a while we get a party or a banquet.

Robert does visit the farm in West Virginia where nearly 200 cows have died. The local townspeople as well as this farmer and his wife are presented as no-nonsense and with respect and empathy. The acting across the board is possibly the best thing about this movie. Mark Ruffalo, all scowls and hunches and boxy shoulders and frumpy, is a far cry from the Hulk he plays in the—speak of the Devil—Avengers movies. He disappears into the role. Anne Hathaway’s presence is a little thankless by comparison; perhaps the writers did not see the irony in having her say the line, “Don’t talk to me like I’m the wife.” She’s a stay-at-home mom, and in this movie, “the wife” is all she can be. If Hathaway just wanted to be a part of this because she believed in the overall message of the movie, I can respect that.

That said, while I can’t say I was ever bored watching Dark Waters, it is also lacking in any genuine drama. It’s tedious with a point, and it does feel like necessary information. We’re meant to get a feeling of how much time and effort—literally a decade and a half of it—it took for Robert Billott to make any headway on this case. In the end, there are some positive results. Just not enough to make you stop feeling like DuPont is basically getting away with murder to this day. If nothing else, this movie contextualizes why these days we all avoid Teflon like the plague. A chemical compound used to make it remains in all of our blood streams and won’t ever go away, though. Fun!

I don’t know . . . maybe if you just read this review, that’s enough. DuPont sucks, they literally poisoned all of us, don’t buy . . . whatever they make. This actually is important. The movie is well put together and skillfully acted. Watch it if you feel like maybe you should, and at some point at least, you probably should. Or you could just take another dose of the opiate of the masses and watch another Marvel movie. Just imagine The Hulk turning to the screen and shouting, “Boycot DuPont! HULK SMASH DUPONT!”

*This is when Mark Ruffalo turns into Oprah. “YOU get cancer! And YOU get cancer!”*

Overall: B