Most people will be cheering for the underdogs in a film where a small-town law firm tackles a big corporation to get compensation for the thousands of people whose lives the company's polluted water has contaminated. What makes this true-life story different is that the chief crusader isn't a lawyer at all, but Erin, a twice-divorced ex-beauty queen and mother of three (Julia Roberts), who believes in showing off her cleavage, losing her temper, swearing like a trooper and driving badly. She also can't hold down a job. This same woman, however, displays all the tenacity of a Jack Russell terrier, using her attraction for men, rapport with women, and photographic memory to research a case in which her legal firm had become involved, and to root out the truth. This isn't the very best of its kind - there's too much emphasis, sometimes tedious, on Erin's home life at the expense of the matter in hand, but Roberts, winning an Oscar, almost makes you forget she's Julia Roberts, and Albert Finney is perfect as the rubicund lawyer who hires her, fires her, then realises he can't crack the case without her.