The Devil Has a Name

An evocative film based on a true story of an everyday farmer battling the injustices of the judicial system as well as corporate oil money. Strong performances from a well known cast.

This is set mostly (and filmed) in California where there is apparently some history of oil companies allowing their polluted water to reside in large ponds without pond liners. As a result some of the toxic chemicals infiltrate into the groundwater causing both health problems and agricultural problems.

In this fictional story a farmer's wife has died, now he has fruit trees starting to die, is approached to sell rights for a few thousand dollars as an attempt to cover up what is really happening. Eventually the farmer hires a top lawyer to fight for his rights. Meanwhile the big boss in Houston has his goon threaten the farmer and promises to take everything he has if he doesn't settle out of court.

All that could have the makings of an interesting movie, and much of it is interesting, but overall I was disappointed. The movie is too uneven and many things that happen just don't make sense within the arc of the story. My wife abandoned it after about 30 minutes. There are a couple of twists of sorts at the end but overall not a particularly good movie.

I see that the writer has no prior experience as a script writer and that seems to be part of the problem. It is relatively easy to come up with a good concept, however not so easy to write a superior script to support it.

On DVD from my public library.

Had more good moments that not so good ones, and the old guys still add some texture to the movie. Too many movies nowadays are way over the top drama and shallow phony bad-asses. Sit back and just enjoy the movie.

Bosworth is supposedly a brilliant oil goddess that outsmarts a farmer who has had his ground water poisoned. She navigates the farmer, the illegals, and the oil company to end up sitting head of the table at the end. The storyline is fractured and the stabs at dark comedy don't really work.

When a production is promoted to be "inspired by true events", a viewer expects actual facts. I watched this Olmos "inspired by true events" production for an hour and could only find one true event. Yes, indeed, JFK was assassinated in Dallas. Other than that, I cannot find one actual fact.

It seems the screenwriter is portraying the contamination of ground water in the Imperial Valley is a result of oil production and lax oversight by California's oil production oversight boards and laws. That is not a fact but imagination.

The contamination is factually based in the overuse of surface water for irrigation and being transported hundreds of miles to the overcrowded and under educated California population centers. The transport away from source never allows aquifers to recharge. This fact is never addressed, as it intersect's with Olmos' political views of the source of California's overgrowth, illegal immigration.

Olmos' work here is not factual in any degree, and blazes a trail into a growing movie genre, Non-science Fiction.