The Rainmaker: Critic Reviews

Despite Mr. Coppola's taste for moodier and more eclectic material, this mainstream opportunity pays off.

Voight proves again what a great character actor he's become by stealing the film as a country club-type defense lawyer with a julep tongue.

Francis Ford Coppola, who wrote and directed the film, has made the most of Grisham's ground-level realism.

Coppola has never been particularly known for his comic touch, but here he seems bent on leavening the melodrama with as many laughs as possible, and they are generally honest and well-earned.

Satisfactory mainstream entertainment, with a handful of major actors in juicy minor roles tossed in for good measure.

The intelligence and subtlety of The Rainmaker took me by surprise.

Coppola has infused The Rainmaker with enough humor, character, honest emotion and storytelling style to make it one of the year's most entertaining movies.

The Rainmaker is easily the best of the Grisham movies so far, and it has touches of excellence, but it's a routine work.

This competent, anonymous legal drama (scripted by Michael Herr) is the best John Grisham adaptation yet.

It's an intelligent film that doesn't cater to the usual eye-candy we face during the holiday season and is one of the best adaptations of a Grisham novel.

The overbearing soundtrack, unimaginative cinematography, and indulgently tear-jerking ending ... this all adds up to a surprisingly derivative movie from Coppola.

A good example of a talented filmmaker making a small miracle out of a film that was destined for drowning in mediocrity.

The Rainmaker aside from being competently made is not something that stands out for being fresh.

Grisham and Coppola (who also adapted the story for the screen) attempt to show us a piece of life, and though the lesson is a bit heavy-handed at times, it does capture the fact that things just don't always work out perfectly in the end.

Coppola adapted the novel himself, and he's done a good job of paring it down.

Even Coppola slumming (and what else has he done in the past two decades) is worth a look...

Celebrates the zeal for justice espoused by a rookie Memphis lawyer.

It is just as entertaining as it is manipulative and corny.

Damon and Danes are fabulous together, and even more than the surprisingly complex story and nice cameos and deft and economical direction by Francis Ford Coppola, they are what makes The Rainmaker worth seeing.

It's no classic, but it's worth seeing.