Erin Brockovich (film)

Erin Brockovich is an American film directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Julia Roberts. It is a dramatization based on the true story of Erin Brockovich-Ellis, an environmental activist who achieved a major court victory against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a company founded in 1905. It was released on March 17, 2000 in the United States.

The real Erin Brokovich makes a cameo appearance as a waitress named Julia, named after the actress Julia Roberts who plays her in the film.

Plot

The life of Erin Brockovich, a divorced mother of three with trouble finding work, changes the day she is involved in a car accident. After losing the trial, the woman questions her lawyer, who tells her that she has few staff to serve her, so she puts pressure on him and starts working in her office.

Following the file of a client named Donna Jensen, Brockovich decides to investigate a case that catches his attention, due to the presence in the file of medical studies and the strange "collaboration" of the company Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) that pays the medical expenses of the client and his entire family. Thus, he discovers the direct relationship between the client's illnesses and his family, with the contamination of local water tables produced by the gas and electricity company that uses Hexavalent Chromium in its processes, although it publicly claims to use trivalent chromium. On the other hand, Erin meets a motorcyclist named George (Aaron Eckhart), with whom she had an argument one night, but they later smoothed things out.

Facing various constraints, including a lack of cooperation from her own co-workers, Erin continues her investigation by visiting every single resident of Hinckley, California, the affected town. She earns the trust of all of them and gets 100% of the plaintiffs to join the class action against PG&E. When one of the plaintiffs (whose cousin died from the contamination) gives him secret copies of an internal PG&E memo showing that the company knew the water was contaminated with hexavalent chromium, did nothing about it, and advised Hinkley's subsidiary to keep this secret, the ruling is final: PG&E had poisoned its well water by improperly dumping industrial waste into it. The judge orders PG&E to pay $333 million in damages to be distributed among the 634 plaintiffs, $5 million of which goes to the Jensens.

The film closes with one of Erin's usual outbursts of rage, as her boss Ed Masry warns her that her compensation for winning the case is different than what they had arranged. Erin's anger subsides when she sees that the check is for $2,000,000, as Ed blurts out the question "Don't they teach beauty queens to apologize?" . The last scenes are accompanied by signs mentioning the actual data of the lawsuit, while Everyday Is A Winding Road, performed by Sheryl Crow, plays in the background. She is also mentioned that she works on several cases, including one she was working on at the time that was similar to the previous one.

Cast

• Julia Roberts like Erin Brockovich.
• Albert Finney as Edward L. Masry
• Aaron Eckhart as George.
• Marg Helgenberger as Donna Jensen.
• Tracey Walter as Charles Embry.
• Peter Coyote as Kurt Potter.
• Cherry Jones like Pamela Duncan.
• Scarlett Pomers like Shanna Jensen.
• Conchata Ferrell like Brenda.
• Michael Harney like Pete Jensen.
• Veanne Cox as Theresa Dallavale.
• Jamie Harrold like Scott.
• Scotty Leavenworth like Matthew Brown.
• Gemmenne de la Peña like Katie Brown.
• Gina Gallego as Attorney Sanchez.
• T. J. Thyne as David Foil.
• Valente Rodriguez like Donald.
• Edward L. Masry, cameo as a comensal.
• Erin Brockovich, cameo like the waitress.

Production

To make the film production, Universal Studios bought the rights to the story from Erin Brockovich for an amount slightly less than 90,000 euros. The film was shot between May 5 and August 5, 1999 at twelve different locations in California.

Reception

The film spent three consecutive weeks at number one at the US box office. It grossed $125 million in the United States. Adding international collections the figure rises to 256 million. Its budget was 52 million.

According to the website Rotten Tomatoes, it obtained 83% positive comments, reaching the following conclusion:

The humorous performances elevate the legal drama that tells the film to leave you breathless.

Rotten Tomatoes

According to the Metacritic website, it received positive reviews, with 73%, based on 35 comments of which 25 are positive.

Comparison with reality

On her website, Erin Brockovich-Ellis says the film is "probably 98% accurate." While the general facts of the story are accurate, there are some minor discrepancies between the actual events and the film, as well as a number of controversial and disputed issues more fundamental to the case.

• In the film, Ed Masry is the lawyer representing Erin Brockovich in the case of the car accident. Actually, he was his legal partner, Jim Vititoe.

• Brockovich-Ellis had been Miss Costa del Pacífico. According to Brockovich, Soderbergh deliberately changed this detail, as he thought it was "lindo" that in the film, she was the beauty queen of the region she came from, Wichita.

• The delator employee who met Brockovich at the bar was Chuck Ebersohl. He told Erin about the documents P fakeGE had commissioned him and Lillian Meléndez to destroy.

The scientific accuracy of the film has been questioned. According to The New York Times, scientists have suggested that their profession would have more rationally and scientifically evaluated the medical evidence that inspired Brockovich. Yet in 2010, state water quality officials estimated the contamination plume to be just over four kilometers long. According to the most recent state report, it can now stretch more than 7 miles, and the state water quality board says it's spreading more than two feet a day. And the Wall Street Journal identified repeated instances over 25 years in which P&G misled regulators, withheld required information, failed to deliver promised improvements, engaged in inappropriate back-channel communications with regulators, or obstructed an investigation.

BDs and DVDs

Erin Brockovich was released on October 3, 2000 in Spain, in DVD format. The disc contains a movie trailer, interviews, never-before-seen scenes, how-to's, filmographies, the true story of Erin Brockovich, and music.

Erin Brockovich was released on April 3, 2008 in Spain, in Blu-ray format. The disc contains the same extras as the DVD format.

Awards

Oscar

Golden Globes

BAFTA

Actors Guild