Film Review
'Rainmaker' showers audience with safe adaptation of Grisham novel
By Scott FoundasFilm Editor
John Grisham's "The
Rainmaker" is as gleefully, indulgently glossy and pristine as perhaps any
movie to emerge from Hollywood since the 1940s. Adapted for the screen and
directed by Francis Ford Coppola, "The Rainmaker" is nearly the epitome of
what we consider to be "well made" about a movie. Skillfully designed in
terms of pacing, performance and composition, the film's look is as
unrivaled for its handsomeness as the peerless ensemble cast is for its
uniform excellence.In fact, more or less
everything about Coppola's "The Rainmaker" snaps into place like fine
clockwork, gently lulling you back into an entertaining rhythm for an
exceedingly brisk two hours and 15 minutes. Which is exactly why it's all
the more disconcerting to have Coppola doing it, for "The Rainmaker" is the
granddaddy of all sellout pics.By design, of course, John
Grisham's narrative is quite the opposite. In relating the allegedly
semi-autobiographical underdog story of Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon), a
first-time lawyer tackling his first big case, Grisham (and, in turn,
Coppola) has spared no expense in making Baylor so cookie-cutter noble, as
to make most boy scouts hide their heads in shame. Baylor is a slightly
less ridiculous riff on the Matthew McConaughey character from "A Time to
Kill", and when you take the two together, there's little doubt that such
flag-waving, apple-pie morality is the product of an author who loves
himself very, very much.Politics aside, however,
there's so little that is in any way out of the ordinary or unexpected
about "The Rainmaker," that by the time the movie settles into its middle
act, it's quite a cornball riot to watch each textbook twist and turn drop
succinctly into place. There is, of course, the working-class rural mother
(Mary Kay Place) seeking revenge against the evil insurance company (a
perennial favorite culprit) that refuses to pay for her dying (and insured)
son's medical treatment.Then we have the wise,
kindly and old eccentric, Miss Birdie (a glorious Teresa Wright), filthy
rich and (surprise!) trying to cut her (gasp!) ungrateful children out of
her will. And, as if that isn't enough, Coppola and Grisham throw in one
battered, but (naturally) beautiful young woman (Claire Danes) and a
seething abusive husband (Andrew Shue) just to give our intrepid hero one
more undying cause to fight for.Now the most confounding
thing about all of this is that, for better or worse, "The Rainmaker" is
compulsively watchable and extremely satisfying moviemaking. Despite an
entire concept that is as mothball-ridden as a Perry Mason rerun,
it's tough to divert your attention away from Coppola's film, or at the
end, to feel you've gotten anything less than your money's worth. That's
largely because "The Rainmaker" is the lightest on its feet of the recent
flood of John Grisham adaptations, and Coppola definitely deserves the
credit for lending just the right self-knowing sense of a good homespun
yarn, to what might otherwise have become very self-serious
proceedings.That's not to say that even
Coppola is right on the money all the time. There's an undeniably grave
side to Grisham's treatise constantly trying to break through Coppola's
comedic veneer, and while the director is wise to hold back on any
pretentious pontificating about domestic violence and corrupt insurers,
he's nevertheless torn between Grisham's histrionics and his own more
balanced sense of storytelling. Coppola tries hard in "The Rainmaker" to
transform Grisham's pulpy pop trash art into something more elevated and
allegorical (the way he did with Puzo's "Godfather"), but some sow's ears
were never meant to be made into silk purses. So, by the time an enraged
and jealous Shue has resorted to ripping furniture out of the walls of
Danes' apartment, you know Coppola has lost the battle to simultaneously
stay loyal to the Grisham cult, give all his characters their due, yet
evade the pall of silliness that hangs over all of the author's work.At the same time, it's so
much fun for both Coppola and his audience to watch such died-in-the-wool
method men as Jon Voight, Roy Scheider and Mickey Rourke ham it up in the
kind of over-the-top comedic caricatures that define the film's supporting
cast, that you wonder how much mind the filmmakers ever paid to relating
the story's more serious points. This is, after all, the chronicle of a
wrongful, premature death and the unscrupulous predatory tactics of our
nation's big businesses, but you're hardly likely to remember that after
Coppola's trumped-up Southern gothic spin on things reaches its saccharine
conclusion.Coppola chooses to play
things so safe here, that it's outrageous. So while "The Rainmaker" may be
the most palatable movie that Grisham has cooked up on screen, the film's
lack of character and personality and its blatant refusal to ever confront
any truly consequential issues, are more indicative of a film directed by
Francis the Talking Mule, than one by the creator of two or three of the
greatest films of the modern sound era.If only "The Rainmaker"
continued the heralding of complete cinematic incompetence represented by
Coppola's previous effort, -- the atrocious Disney kiddie comedy "Jack" --
then it would be a lot easier to fit it into a general decline in Coppola's
filmic Ïuvre. As things stand though, "The Rainmaker" instead finds the
director working as assuredly close to the top of his form, as any film
since the superb "Tucker" back in 1988. Coppola's control over all the
disparate elements of a very busy, messy story is nearly unrivaled for its
mastery, yet it is his deliberate choice to neither challenge nor provoke
in any way that is so maddening.Perhaps it can be argued
that the task of tackling Grisham is, in itself, a creatively inhibiting
prospect for a filmmaker, but then why would a director as consistently
pensive and prickly in his choice of projects as Coppola settle on such a
banal option? Does artistic impetus give way to commercial desire as one
reaches Coppola's age? (This is easily his most blatant commercial stab
since "Peggy Sue Got Married.") Is the director more concerned with his own
wines, pasta sauces and vast Napa estate, than with his celluloid
endeavors? Whatever the case, John
Grisham's "The Rainmaker" feels too safe for Coppola, enough to even make
the offensively awkward "Jack" seem, in spite of its awfulness, more
personal and venturesome by comparison. Some would undoubtedly suggest that
"The Rainmaker" still represents a step back in the right direction for the
filmmaker (and maybe it does), but I'd take more follies like the
neon-drenched "One From the Heart" any day over more of this blithe
Hollywood drivel. B-"The Rainmaker" is now playing nationwide.