20 great movies from the past 20 years: Dark Waters

I’m counting down to the 2025 best-of-the-year season by recommending 20 of my favorite movies from the past 20 years. Here are the previous entries, if you want to catch up:

2005: Caché
2006: Undisputed II: Last Man Standing
2007: Sunshine
2008: Speed Racer
2009: Vengeance
2010: Unstoppable
2011: The Three Musketeers
2012: Eega
2013: Rope A Dope
2014: Hill of Freedom
2015: SPL 2: A Time for Consequences
2016: Love & Friendship
2017: Mersal
2018: Infinite Football

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Some movies stick with you because of a performance or particular image, others because they materially impact your life. Todd Haynes’ legal thriller Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo as Robert Bilott, a real-life corporate defense lawyer investigating a string of unusual deaths in West Virginia. When Bilott discovers a chemical plant owned by mega-corporation DuPont is behind the deaths, he feels compelled to take action, no matter the personal and professional cost.

It’s a riveting story about one of the most egregious and lethal crimes ever committed by an American corporation (and that’s a long list). Dupont knowingly poisoned people with a forever chemical known as PFOA used in its production of Teflon, despite discovering in private tests that PFOA caused cancer. Dupont also dumped chemicals at a West Virginia landfill, leading to the aforementioned deaths and many more illnesses. Bilott’s tireless investigation helped bring the tragedy and Dupont’s ensuing cover-up to light, leading to a lengthy court case and a general awareness of the dangers of Teflon. (Immediately after watching the movie for the first time, we threw out all of our nonstick pans.)

Aesthetically, Dark Waters is tightly focused on that investigation. We see Ruffalo’s Bilott crouched in crowded rooms of files, desperately sorting through them for any document that might help his case. It’s a naturalistic departure from Haynes’ more provocative and subversive style as seen in movies like Safe or Carol. That works to the movie’s benefit, as it allows us to fully appreciate the mountains of paperwork Bilott had to dig through, the personal and professional pressure looming over him, and the dedication it took to fight one of the nation’s most powerful companies and their army of attorneys. In the press tour for his new HBO show Task, Ruffalo joked that he’s in his “sad dad” era, in terms of the parts he’s getting cast for. Dark Waters is a great preview of that: Ruffalo plays Bilott as worn down but relentless in his pursuit for some justice.

Dark Waters is part of the crucial canon of true American hero movies – movies about people who take extraordinary personal risk to hold the rich and powerful to account, and do so outside of the typical Hollywood frameworks of law enforcement and the military. It’d make a fantastic double feature with The Insider or Erin Brockovich. Just throw out your nonstick pans first.