Dark Waters

Some of my early memories involve playing outdoors in the 1970s on our family farm in south-central West Virginia. A kid could get lost in his imagination in a place like that: I was a cowboy while riding my pony, Robin Hood hiding out in the forest, and Evel Knieval while doing stupid stunts on my dirt bike.

I lived, although I don't know how.

I often played in our backyard creek. There, no matter who I imagined I was, I was really just a typical West Virginia kid playing in sludge and sloshing through water made colorful by oil leaking downstream from a coal mine.  And because I was a just a kid from West By God, my safety was less important to The Man than was the cost of creating systems that protect me from their pollution.

In the 1970s the government had to step in and make that decision for them.

Directed by Todd Haynes and starring Mark Ruffalo, Dark Waters tells the story of what happens when The Man decides his profit is more important than the health and safety of his neighbors. The legal mystery, based on a true story that spanned over 20 years, follows unassuming hero Robert Bilott in his David vs. Goliath fight to prove The Man wrong.

Dark Waters tells an honest and mostly accurate story, and Ruffalo is good at playing the understated hero. Some characters -- Ann Hathaway's Sarah Bilott, particularly -- are two dimensional and underdeveloped. I suspect that's to allow focus on the conspiracy, but it is a flaw in the film. What does work, however, is the depiction of West Virginians allowing ourselves to be exploited by big business in return for a job that will feed our families.

"Go ahead and test it, you won't find anything," says a woman having blood drawn to determine if she's contaminated by C-8.  Although she unknowingly drinks poisoned water every day from her tap, the woman adds: "DuPont is good people."

It's the West Virginia way.