Charlize Theron plays Josey Aimes, a down-on-her-luck woman who has decided to go to work in the mine, which is not exactly a woman-friendly environment in the late eighties. Though there are a handful of women there, they are roundly dismissed as real workers and regularly harassed in just about every imaginable way.
This is the story of how Josey Aimes fought back against the great machine that she was up against, and how nearly everyone was against her - not just the men in the mine and the courts, but even the other women who were at times her friends and the people in her own family.
Like many small towns, the women working at the mine need their jobs, so they put up with the abuse and turn a blind eye toward the abuse of one another, hoping to keep the jobs that they have, hoping to eventually be seen as "one of the guys". This works well enough until Josey comes along, as she's had just about enough abuse in her life. Even then, she takes it for a while, until one day at her son's hockey game, the wife of a male co-worker calls her a vicious slur in front everyone, and that is the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.
Unfortunately there is very little that she can do, as none of the other women want to rock the boat, and none of the men really want the women there. Even her own father, who has worked in the mine all his life, sees his daughter's side of things. One night she stands up at a union meeting and is soundly jeered by everyone, and that is the turning point for her father, and a few of the others as well - but she finally gets a sympathetic ear from a former miner turned attorney (played by Woody Harrelson), who is willing to be the first to turn a sexual harassment case into a class action, and that's when things get interesting.
Though the movie is inspired by true events, and the end is somewhat telegraphed, the climactic moments in the court room are well done. Seeing Josey's friend Glory (a solid performance by Frances McDormand) finally throw her support behind Josey, even though it comes from a wheelchair, and then the other stand up for Josey one by one and the bosses of the mine slowly realize that they're about to lose, is quite powerful.
There are three problems with it all. The first is that it takes so long in coming. There aren't many surprises in the movie, but it takes a really long time to tell the story. The second is that even though Glory gradually loses her battle with Lou Gehrig's disease, and Josey is a quintessential white trash story, it's tough to really care. Glory's husband Kyle (Sean Bean) had a touching moment in the movie, but it lasted for about five seconds. The rest just floats by without really getting inside you. It doesn't matter if how good the story is if you don't care about the players.
The final problem is that the way that it's told makes things a bit difficult to follow. The whole thing is told looking back in flashbacks from the trial - but the flashbacks are rather long, like the trial is more of a flash-forward, so it makes the whole thing a bit jumpy. It likely would have been easier to follow if it was told in a linear fashion with the trial towards the end, though I'm sure that would have made someone upset.
That said, it's not a bad movie, and it is an important tale. It is perhaps just not the best telling.
Rated R for sequences involving sexual harassment including violence and dialogue and for language.
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