The Rain Maker (M)
Director: Who cares?
Bug rating: two out of five.

The Rainmaker – what a washout!
The main problem with The Rainmaker is that it covers well-worn territory via a plot that goes exactly where you suspect it is heading, and subplots that go nowhere.
The film is based on a John Grisham story about a young but eager and crusading lawyer who battles the odds by taking on the big guys and winning.
To darville the American film critic, Joe Queenan, The Rainmaker reminded me very much of Grisham’s other works such as The Firm, which is a story about a young but eager and crusading lawyer who battles the odds by taking on the big guys and winning.
It also reminded me of Grisham’s The Pelican Brief – a story about a young but eager and crusading lawyer who battles the odds by taking on the big guys and winning.
The Rainmaker also has elements that can’t help but spark comparisons with The Client – a story about a young but eager and crusading lawyer who battles the odds by taking on the big guys and winning.
In The Rainmaker, Matt Damon plays Rudy Baylor (YECL) who takes on a large insurance company (TBGs). The company has refused to pay out on a policy for a young man – of course he comes from a dirt poor family – dying of leukaemia.
This should set the scene for some riveting courtroom drama. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen. What is served up are the usual courtroom cliches – the tyro lawyer versus the double-breasted and bow-tied legal team, surprise witnesses, disallowed testimony and seemingly lopsided rules of evidence.
It’s all been done before. About 15 years ago
The Verdict, starring Paul Newman, covered this ground – and did a far better job. Perhaps it was because Newman’s lawyer wasn’t young, eager or crusading. He was a middle-aged drunk and the compensation case he took on was his last shot at success.
In The Rainmaker there is no real tension because the audience knows it doesn’t really matter if Damon loses the insurance case – he’s a YECL. He’ll survive, he’ll be okay.
Besides, one look at the jury and you can tell they can’t wait to screw the insurance company. Even the “surprise” twist at the end – where the winners turn rapidly to losers – doesn’t ring true because all the major characters just take it in their stride.
If they don’t care, why on earth should we? The major subplot of the film is also a fizzer. It involves Claire Danes as the battered girlfriend of a rather violent young man who’s a whiz with a baseball bat both on and off the field.
Danes’ character quickly becomes Damon’s love interest but is soon arrested for the murder of her abusive partner. This turn of events not only shook me out of my lethargy, it set my mind racing.
Now, here’s a twist, my mind exclaimed, suddenly interested in what had been until then a fairly lacklustre movie. He’s a lawyer and now she’s a defendant, so he’ll obviously defend her on the murder charge.
But wait, surely there’ll be a time when her murder case clashes with the insurance case. Maybe the trial schedules will overlap – same time, same day and no chance of rescheduling either.
He’ll have to decide which case he puts first. Will he put love ahead of righting a massive wrong?
Will he allow his own feelings to compromise the chances of the defenceless people he’s sworn to help? How will he reconcile the two when he’s forced to make a choice? My mind need not have bothered racing.
In fact it needn’t have bothered breaking into even a brisk walk. No, the filmmakers had a better idea – have the district attorney drops the murder charge. Bang. Out of the blue it happens. "The DA has dropped the charges,” Damon explains to Danes as she is released after spending even less time behind bars than Lady McMahon.
”Why?” asks a bewildered Danes through her airbrushed bruises and prosthetic swollen eyes.
"Well,” explains Damon, “she says there’s no chance of a conviction, and besides we’ve only got about 40 minutes of screen time left – too short to properly develop another competing case for me to handle. Oh, and some of the audience has walked out already.”
He didn’t say the stuff after the bit about “no chance of a conviction”, but he should have because it’s true.
In another pointless subplot, Mickey Rourke plays the sleazy, shifty, tasteless, and borderline legitimate (I think he was acting) principal of the law firm that Damon’s Rudy Baylor joins.
But, despite being one of only three believable characters in the film, Rourke’s character, Bruiser, has to leave town suddenly because the authorities are wise to some of his dubious activities. So old Bruiser vanishes from the screen fairly early and returns only to give some key advice to Damon by telephone.
Maybe The Rainmaker is a good read. It sure as hell isn’t a good movie. Its only bright spots are the performances of Danny DeVito as Damon’s unqualified but streetwise partner and Jon Voight as the wealthy, slimy and unprincipled counsel for the insurance company.
Without them, The Rainmaker would be an even drier film.