Limerculer
A waste of 90 minutes of my life
Jenna Walter
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
Janis
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
Paul J. Nemecek
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.
DVR_Brale
Matt Damon went hard on this one! If you want to learn how to act like a gentleman, look up to Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon) manners. He's smart, hard working and most of all friendly and helping guy. He treats everybody with respect.Danny DeVito plays Baylor's sidekick. Even though Deck (DeVito) is practically an expert on insurance companies, Baylor is the man. Deck gathers information and advises but Baylor does all the really noble job. Interesting inversion which serves to point out that virtues are generally more important than knowledge alone.This movie will inspire you to become a better at your profession by inspiring you to become a better man.
Raul Faust
Well, I'm a law school student in the last year of graduation, who has been approved in the bar exam (it has another name in Brazil), so it's evident that I feel much connected with Rudy Baylor. The movie is centered on the difficulties this young lawyer has to face to get things done. He has to avoid speaking on the phone in his own office in order to not fall in a trap from the adversary attorney. What amazes me about this film is that, even thought there were thousand of courtroom dramas in the nineties, "The Rainmaker" was able to show a story not so clichéd, like the innocent who goes to prison due to a conspiracy-- which would feel extremely cliché nowadays. Also, the entire cast looks prepared for their work in here; Danny DeVito, in fact, almost steals the show with his brilliant performance as a paralegal-- who acts like a lawyer sometimes, even if that's illegal. Furthermore, albeit the movie takes more than two hours to tell a story, it never feels tiring or repetitive, which is common in the genre. The problem involving health insurance companies is still very common, inclusive in Brazil, and we are all tired of seeing such lack of respect with the consumer. I'm just not giving it a better rating because the subplot involving a beaten-up woman didn't feel pertinent with the movie as a whole. I mean, if director/editor decided to take those scenes off, they would make NO difference to the main plot, so I sometimes wondered what was that all about. All in all, "The Rainmaker" is a decent production from the good decade that nineties was in movies, and I surely recommend it for anyone who enjoys the genre!
Steve Schreiber
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.
