Todd Haynes tack­les a legal thriller in the Dark Waters trailer

As you may or may not be aware, there’s going to be a new Todd Haynes movie in the­aters before the end of the year. There hasn’t been too much com­mo­tion about it, aside from on the pages of this esteemed e‑publication, but today, the upcom­ing Dark Waters has sent some rip­ples (aque­ous pun!) out into the film world with its first trailer.

Our ini­tial read of ​“gen­der-flipped Erin Brock­ovich” from the basic out­line of the premise seems to have been dead-on, though with the trail­er con­clud­ing on a shot sug­gest­ing a car about to explode, there’s a dol­lop of Michael Clay­ton in there as well. Suf­fice it to say that view­ers entranced by sto­ries about lawyers hav­ing a change of heart and defend­ing the lit­tle guy against cor­po­rate oppres­sors will be satisfied.

Mark Ruf­fa­lo leads the charge as an attor­ney work­ing for Du Pont Chem­i­cal, who real­izes that his job may involve some mea­sure of eth­i­cal com­pro­mise after it comes out that his employ­er has been poi­son­ing a rur­al town. As he takes up a nobler cause, the trail­er hits all the req­ui­site beats: threats from legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion (William Jack­son Harp­er makes a brief appear­ance, rid­ing high after Mid­som­mar ear­li­er this year), haughty dis­cour­age­ments from the exec­u­tive high­er-ups (Vic­tor Gar­ber and Tim Rob­bins), sup­port­ive speechi­fy­ing from his duti­ful wife (Anne Hath­away).

The trail­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly the snatch­es of script includ­ed there­in, gives the impres­sion of some­thing a bit more pedes­tri­an than usu­al for mas­ter styl­ist Todd Haynes. But his work has always been dif­fi­cult to adver­tise, and he’s also reg­u­lar­ly excelled when work­ing in a more main­stream straight­for­ward mode, so there’s ample cause to with­hold judge­ment until we can actu­al­ly get eyes on this thing.

Pun­dits con­cerned with such things have already start­ed up chat­ter about the film’s Oscar chances, whether it could be a late-stage con­tender for major prizes with its time­ly mes­sag­ing (the peo­ple of Flint, Michi­gan still don’t have clean water) and star turn from Ruf­fa­lo. Though he does look to be return­ing to the har­ried jus­tice-chas­ing that got him a nom­i­na­tion for Spot­light, the trail­er scans more as fod­der for the likes of This Had Oscar Buzz than an actu­al awards horse.

Dark Waters comes to the­aters in the US on 22 Novem­ber, and then the UK on 24 Jan­u­ary, 2020.