Dark Waters: A Film Review

A Masterclass in Accountability

The right person is the hero in this movie. He’s not a Bruce Wayne-style vigilante, delivering justice with a mob of hitmen on his trail. He’s a lawyer, just a good person who starts delivering justice because his conscience won’t let him choose another course of action. It’s an achingly gentle film. The big moments of discovery are meticulously researched, because these events occurred before people knew that something was wrong with “Big Pharma.” This happened before the public was aware that the biggest corporations were willing to put profit over their well-being. Rob Bilott could have turned a blind eye, but the movie dramatizes the fact that he decided to do something.

This is what makes this movie so incredible. The hardest acts of heroism, the movie seems to say, aren’t those adrenaline-spiked moments where the world is aware that you’re the greatest. It’s harder, much harder, to act when no one knows that you’re anything special. The most moving moments in the film take place quietly. When Rob Bilott is exhausted, searching for a needle in a haystack, but sits down amidst an impossibly large amount of data to start organizing it— it’s that, choosing to act, when you could just take the easier road and give up, that makes this man extraordinary. 🌇