LIKE its subject, a lawsuit that is expected to go on for another 10 years, “Crude” has no ending. This is the perfect ending for this Goliath versus Goliath documentary about powerful personal-injury lawyers taking on a powerful corporation.
An international corps of ambulance chasers uses the jungle inhabitants of Ecuador who live atop an oil patch sort of like kindergarten-age beauty pageant contestants in a poverty-pimping scheme.
The film does not come close to demonstrating that the lawsuit’s target, Chevron, is to blame for the pollution (Chevron acquired Texaco, which left the region 17 years ago as Ecuador’s state company took over), nor that the pollution is responsible for any of the diseases the lawyers blame on it, nor that the agreement Chevron signed with Ecuador releasing it from any future claims is invalid.
Instead, the documentary falls into the familiar pattern of presenting four or five scenes from one side of the argument (sick villagers, for instance, show us the diseases that afflict them) followed by 30 seconds or so of the other side.
To be blunt, the jungle people, who have no sewerage, drink and bathe in their own filth, so it isn’t surprising that a lot of them are ill. The deep-pocketed lawyers who “fight” for them show no interest in building them any sanitation, but are girlishly fascinated by a Vanity Fair story. They also enjoy sucking up to Trudie Styler — who, to her credit, sends in 50 filtered rain barrels that actually improve the situation.
Looking a tad less virtuous is Upper West Side lawyer, Steven Donziger, who presents us with the tawdry spectacle of watching him lounging on a hotel room bed in his shorts like an emperor as he tells one of the villagers what to say.
Who will clean up the global trail of toxic sludge left by opportunistic lawyers?