[In the following positive review, O'Hehir credits Soderbergh for his restrained direction in Erin Brockovich.]

Much has been made of Julia Roberts' purported sexiness in Erin Brockovich and there's no doubt the star is an eyeful in her endless array of cleavage-exposing blouses and minuscule skirts (the question of where a nearly destitute woman gets all these clothes is not answered). But the real brilliance of Roberts' performance lies in the edgy, defensive quality beneath Erin's aggressive hotness. It's as if Erin accepts the world's judgement that her sex appeal is her most valuable attribute, but isn't sure it's ever brought her anything worth having. Still, the former Miss Wichita has no compunctions about employing her assets when necessary. When her lawyer-boss, the rumpled, beefy Ed asks her how she's so sure she can extract the necessary records from the water board's offices, she replies: “They're called boobs, Ed.” Erin may be a hero, but she's definitely no angel. She's hot-headed, short-tempered, insecure and vain. She can be gratuitously cruel to her co-workers and has little interest in female solidarity. She addresses one overweight female employee as “Krispy Kreme” (a popular doughnut chain) and scorns the suggestion her revealing attire makes other women uncomfortable. “As long as I have one ass instead of two, I'll wear what I want,” she says.

It's difficult not to sympathise with her easy-going biker boyfriend George, who feels he's bearing the brunt of all Erin's pent-up resentment against men. But Roberts is completely convincing as a woman who feels she can't afford anything like George's laissez-faire attitude toward love and life. There's a magnificent moment when Erin senses herself falling for him despite her better judgement, and her mouth twists into a grimace of temptation and regret, like someone biting into a delicacy she has sworn off.

If Roberts' delightful performance, shaded with a depth and complexity unprecedented in her career, is the centrepiece of Erin Brockovich, considerable praise is also due to Steven Soderbergh's restrained, respectful direction. Armed with a fine screenplay by Susannah Grant (based on the real PG&E/Hinkley case), Soderbergh never sentimentalises his David-and-Goliath story (in the vein of Norma Rae and Silkwood) or tricks it up with unnecessary cinematic gamesmanship. Edward Lachman's camerawork is fluid but never intrusive. He and the director are content to allow the actors and the crystalline light of California's high desert enough space to do the work.

Perhaps Soderbergh's idiosyncratic pattern of bouncing from star-driven Hollywood vehicles (Out of Sight) to zero-budget independent productions (Schizopolis) has lent him the confidence and perspective for Erin Brockovich. Many mainstream filmmakers would have focused almost entirely on Erin's search for love and validation and boiled the lawsuit down to one or two scenes of heroic courtroom drama. Soderbergh's leisurely pace yields all sorts of unforced moments that heighten the film's naturalism, from Erin's first angry meeting with George tuning up his Harley-Davidson outside at night, to the scene in which she convinces cancer-stricken Donna Jensen PG&E has poisoned her water and lied to her about it. Horror spreading slowly across her face, Donna abruptly runs outside to drag her kids from the swimming pool.

There's also room in Erin Brockovich for fine acting in minor roles, including Marg Helgenberger and Cherry Jones as Hinkley women with whom Erin bonds and Tracey Walter as a slightly creepy local man who seems to be stalking her (but who, of course, holds a valuable secret). Albert Finney's Ed is another of the actor's familiar cantankerous types, mannerisms and accent apparently borrowed from W. C. Fields. Jamie Harrold offers an amusing shtick as a water-board clerk smitten by Erin; Peter Coyote is less fortunate with the generic role of a hotshot lawyer, one of the script's few weak links. Perhaps the best thing about this relaxed and supremely engaging film (for my money the best work either the director or his star has ever done) is that even its near-fairy-tale resolution doesn't offer a magical transformation. When we leave Erin, she is far richer and more successful than when we found her, but she's just as highly-strung and nearly as neurotic. Like the people of Hinkley, she isn't free from the consequences of American life, but she has done what she can to take control of her little piece of it.