October 16, 2006
When a beaten wife and mother (Charlize Theron) leaves her man and heads to her home town, she hopes for a fresh start, leaving the red-neck, bullying world behind her. What she finds, on taking a job at the local mine, is a cess-pool of industrial discrimination and male chauvinist piggery. The handful of women at the pit are subjected to daily degradations of gross-out proportions. Do the girls want a portaloo out on site? Hey, how about we rock it about while one of them’s in there? Ooops it’s fallen over - yuck. Girls in a man’s mine? Hey, what’s that in your locker – a used condom! What’s a girl to do? Faced with a management that won’t listen and colleagues who turn the other cheek, Charlize takes the company to court. And, in this true tale, it becomes a landmark legal case that rocks her family, the tight-knit local community as well as industrial relations for women across America.
Theron is adept at the vulnerability and sparkiness which give credibility to a moralistic film. Shot in drained-out, chilly greys, it has the seriousness of a documentary but is 100% drama – part family, part court-room. Sean Bean pops up - as husband to Theron’s ailing colleague Frances McDormand - playing against type as a sensitive soul. Good, too, is Woody Harrelson’s ex-ice hockey pro turned lawyer who takes Theron’s case. Interesting that it’s the broken men (Bean was invalided out of the mine, Harrelson’s ice hockey career was cut short through injury) who are the nice guys: the macho men are the heels, the ones who’re really ‘broken’.
Sure, the film is manipulative and the denouement is a tad trite. But it’s a worthy entry into the court-room genre, taking time to flesh out the characters, played well by a strong cast.
Theron is adept at the vulnerability and sparkiness which give credibility to a moralistic film. Shot in drained-out, chilly greys, it has the seriousness of a documentary but is 100% drama – part family, part court-room. Sean Bean pops up - as husband to Theron’s ailing colleague Frances McDormand - playing against type as a sensitive soul. Good, too, is Woody Harrelson’s ex-ice hockey pro turned lawyer who takes Theron’s case. Interesting that it’s the broken men (Bean was invalided out of the mine, Harrelson’s ice hockey career was cut short through injury) who are the nice guys: the macho men are the heels, the ones who’re really ‘broken’.
Sure, the film is manipulative and the denouement is a tad trite. But it’s a worthy entry into the court-room genre, taking time to flesh out the characters, played well by a strong cast.