The world is filled with injustice, and we ignore most of it because it would be hard to go through the world otherwise. That’s what can make a movie like Dark Waters feel so bracing. The film, which was released in 2019 and almost immediately became underrated, tells the story of an attorney who slowly connects a number of deaths in a small, rural town to one of the world’s biggest corporations.
As he comes to appreciate the scale of the conspiracy he’s uncovered, he begins to fear for his life and for the lives of millions around the world. It’s a dark, bracing movie, but one well worth watching while it’s available on Peacock. Here are three reasons it’s worth checking out:
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Dark Waters is about something relatively mundane, but it plays like a conspiracy thriller
The mystery at the heart of Dark Waters is sinister, but what makes the movie so remarkable is the way it manages to make a story about the dangers of Teflon feel like All the President’s Men.
Thanks to expert direction from Todd Haynes and an impressive script, we learn everything we need to know about this dangerous material and about why DuPont was so intent on covering it up. Dark Waters is far from the first movie to tell the story of a crusading attorney fighting for disadvantaged people, but Dark Waters knows exactly where and when to defy your expectations.
It’s anchored by Anne Hathaway and Mark Ruffalo
Mark Ruffalo is remarkably good as a lawyer who feels a little bit like he’s losing his mind as he dives deeper and deeper into the conspiracy at the center of this story. Anne Hathaway is just as good as his wife, a role that would be thankless in most projects.
Here, though, Hathaway becomes the main witness to her husband’s unraveling and comes to fear for his safety and for that of her family as he uncovers how much the people at DuPont were willing to cover up to make a profit.
It manages to end on a note of triumph
Although Dark Waters is about corporate malfeasance more than anything else, the movie nonetheless finds some hope in its story of one man taking on a giant corporation.
The brilliance of Dark Waters, though, is how it understands that the massive settlements won against DuPont do little to make up for the immense damage the company did. It’s good news, of course, that people were compensated for the harm that was done to them. It doesn’t make up for what DuPont got away with, though, or all the people who died before they could see a penny.
Stream Dark Waters on Peacock.