This is the kind of stuff that makes your blood boil, doesn't it? Whenever I become aware of instances where products produced by large corporations are deemed dangerous or hazardous to one's health, I always wonder whether the executives of those companies have any trouble sleeping at night. In the case of Teflon or it's component PFOA, the summary of the story concludes that it can now be found in ninety nine percent of everything living on the planet. Seeing as how this includes those same executives themselves and their families, you have to wonder why they would willingly keep on poisoning themselves. It took real courage and a whole lot of persistence for the real live Rob Bilott, here portrayed by Mark Ruffalo, to take on the huge Dupont Chemical Company back in the late Nineties when he first learned how one of their dump sites was poisoning the ground water and streams in his former home town of Parkersburg, West Virginia. It didn't take long for Bilott and his law firm to realize the system was rigged to cover up wrong doing and avoid accountability for their poor corporate behavior. The film I'm sure can't possibly convey the frustration and anger experienced by his law firm and it's clients over the decade plus long battle to set things right, just as I'm sure no amount of damages can soother the families who lost loved ones to the hazards posed by a poisonous product. It might sound like a lot to hear that Dupont eventually settled for a six hundred seventy million dollar fine over it's use of Teflon, but if you break it down, it's just under a hundred ninety thousand dollars per case. Seems to me like the company got away cheap.

Dupont's stock dropped when this film was released. I never knew about this deception until I saw this biopic. Casting was excellent with stellar and convincing performances. Directing was good but the editing was terrible in some parts. I also felt the 126 min runtime was too long, and felt even longer with the slow pacing and some dragged out/unnecessary scenes. Had the pacing been faster and 20-25 mins shaved off the runtime, I would've rated this gem higher. Still, a great biopic about a story that needed to be told, and a well deserved 8/10 from me. Now off to go throw away my teflon non-stick pans...

I recall following this case in the papers several years ago. Of course, the whistle blower is out one the edge, butting heads with the Czars who control the world. So a few people die. Or a lot. Think of all the cool stuff we have as a result to scientific advancements. But here we are not talking about medical breakthroughs and lab animals. We are talking about cookware. This is such a long and intense film that leaves one exhausted at the end and the truth is, it keeps on going. I am not on board with the idea that because a company is big it is evil. This is about one that has been. Throw enough lawyers at anything and the amount of time it takes to litigate is enough to watch more and more victims pass away. I thought that this film's strength is its lack of bombast. It drags us through the layers that one must engage in order to protect us.