A Chilling True Story of Corporate Indifference

The cases Bilott investigated and eventually bundled into giant class-action lawsuits involved PFOAs. These industrial materials are best known for their use in Teflon and other nonstick pans but are also present in upholstery, carpeting, sealing agents, and textiles. Produced by DuPont since the ’50s, PFOAs have only recently been acknowledged as potentially toxic, particularly for factory workers who might have worked directly with them. Bilott is tipped off to the danger when a West Virginia farmer (Bill Camp) calls asking for help, saying his cows are dying at rapid rates and DuPont, a local employer, is to blame.

As a corporate lawyer, Bilott is used to defending chemical companies, not suing them—but he takes the case on nevertheless. When Bilott starts digging deeper, Haynes leans into the bleakness of the investigations. Bilott pokes around in towns that are either beholden to DuPont or have been forgotten by the company; back in the halls of power, he buttonholes DuPont executives like Phil Donnelly (Victor Garber), trying to get answers using his legal clout. With the case dragging on for years, Haynes starts to pile on the fear and mistrust, showing how DuPont tries to flood Bilott with data to keep him far from the truth.

Ruffalo, whose personal passion for this story helped put it on-screen, is the perfect unassuming hero, bringing a sort of shambling intensity to Bilott and asking questions in a probing mumble. He’s like a middle-management Columbo, shuffling up to craven businessmen and quietly asking them how they sleep at night. As in any good legal drama, there’s a talented ensemble of characters whose patience Bilott tests with his persistence: Tim Robbins plays an understanding but frustrated boss, Anne Hathaway a supportive but frustrated wife. Bill Pullman is the Bilott team’s showboating West Virginia trial lawyer, who celebrates success in the courtroom by snapping his suspenders with satisfaction.

Dark Waters nails all those details, gratifyingly depicting how a legal case gets built piece by piece, month by month, until it’s an unstoppable force. But the movie’s biggest triumph is Haynes’s skillful portrayal of how a monolith of American capitalism can plow through human lives with near impunity. The people working at DuPont are corporate cogs, almost insufficiently evil compared with the damage they’re indirectly wreaking. Dark Waters is about how companies can function in a manner that’s both criminal and incidental, causing people to suffer through the water they drink and the air they breathe. Such dangers are chillingly ordinary, and as this movie makes clear, they’re not going away anytime soon.

David Sims is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers culture.