The Rainmaker

The Rainmaker (1997) — watch online on iFILM, a courtroom drama directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Matt Damon plays Rudy Baylor, a freshly minted lawyer with no firm, no money, and no idea how thoroughly the legal system can be stacked against you.

Rudy stumbles onto a case that seasoned attorneys passed on: a working-class family is suing a powerful insurance company that denied coverage to their son, who is dying of leukemia. On the other side stands a polished, well-funded defense team led by Jon Voight. Rudy's only real backup is Deck Shifflet — an unlicensed paralegal played by Danny DeVito — who knows how to dig through discovery documents better than most lawyers in the city. Danny Glover plays the presiding judge; Mickey Rourke appears as a veteran ambulance chaser who gives Rudy his first real piece of advice.

Coppola adapted John Grisham's novel and quietly shifted its center of gravity: this is less a story about winning than about what winning actually costs. Claire Danes plays a young woman trapped in her own impossible situation, whose path crosses Rudy's in ways that outlast the verdict. Stream The Rainmaker (1997) online on iFILM.