The Rainmaker (1997) - Movie Synopsis & Plot

Rudy Baylor (MATT DAMON) is an idealistic young law school graduate who aspires to be a "rainmaker," a bright star with a golden touch who will lavish cash-rich clients and billable hours on the firm that is fortunate enough to hire him. Of course, it would help if the young hotshot could get past the front-office receptionist of any law firm that would give him the time of day.

So Rudy takes the high road, doggedly pursuing clients and legal work wherever he can find it-which means he must associate with some fairly lowlife characters in order to make a living while he fights injustice in a legal system that has tipped the scales toward the rich and powerful.

He finds employment doing grunt work and chasing ambulances for a sleazy character named Bruiser Stone (MICKEY ROURKE), a lawyer with connections in the Memphis underworld and investments in topless bars. As Baylor forages through the seedier enclaves of the legal hierarchy, he learns more and more about how things work in a corrupt system. Though he maintains the high level of idealism that took him to law school in the first place, his most valuable asset in the pursuit of real justice is his highly developed appreciation of the absurd and his unflagging sense of humor.

In the process of making his way in this Kafkaesque world of torts and tarts, Rudy latches onto a case that will shake the system to its foundation, exposing a multimillion-dollar insurance scam by taking on a powerful and corrupt company that has systematically made fortunes off the backs of poor and working-class people.

"John Grisham's The Rainmaker" weaves a powerful, and often quite humorous tale of legal intrigue and moral bankruptcy. Rudy's unlikely path leads him through the tangle of big corporate business by way of the shoddiest practitioners in the American legal system and to a crisis in his own conscience that forces him to face his future with a new perspective. Along the way he encounters an elderly woman with a mysterious fortune; a nefarious lawyer with a fish tank full of sharks; an operator who can't pass the bar but knows the ins and outs of the legal system; a beautiful girl in very real distress; and a family with a dying son whose case is the vessel in which Rudy sails this treacherous legal sea.

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