Do You Remember 1997’s ‘The Rainmaker’? A Refresher on the Movie Ahead of USA’s New Series
The new USA legal drama The Rainmaker, which premieres on Friday August 15 at 10 pm ET/PT, follows a hotshot young lawyer (Milo Callaghan) who joins forces with a small-time, ambulance-chasing attorney nicknamed “Bruiser” (Lana Parrilla) to face off against a wealthy, powerful lawyer (John Slattery) in a lawsuit that gets at the heart of everything wrong with American health care. And if that sounds familiar, you probably rented 1997’s The Rainmaker back when there used to be Blockbusters.
The new series is definitely a throwback to the golden era of legal thrillers — but how similar will the show be to the film?
What was the original film about?
The Rainmaker stars Matt Damon, just months away from his breakthrough movie, Good Will Hunting. He plays Rudy Baylor, a law school graduate who joins a questionable small-time legal practice overseen by “Bruiser” Stone (Mickey Rourke). When Stone disappears, Baylor steps up to run the practice alongside paralegal Deck Shifflet (Danny DeVito), who’s clever and knowledgeable, but just can’t seem to pass the bar exam. They take up the case of Dot and Buddy Black, whose 22-year-old son is terminally ill with leukemia and could have been saved by a bone marrow transplant, had their insurance company not denied it.
The Rainmaker sees Baylor go up against Leo F. Drummond (Jon Voight), a lawyer from an expensive legal firm defending the insurance company. Through an intense legal fight, Baylor eventually triumphs, helping to put the insurance company out of business. Along the way, he connects with Kelly Riker (Claire Danes), a domestic violence victim who has reached the end of her rope. By the film’s end, Baylor and Riker are together, and leave town to start new lives — which for Baylor, now disillusioned with the idea of being a practicing lawyer, means just teaching law.
The film also stars Virginia Madsen, Andrew Shue, Danny Glover and Dean Stockwell.
Francis Ford Coppola wrote and directed The Rainmaker, adapting it from the John Grisham novel of the same name that came out in 1995. Critics liked the film, but it made only $45 million (on an estimated budget of $40 million), so it was a commercial disappointment, especially compared to other hit Grisham adaptations of the era, like 1994’s The Client, which starred Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones, and earned $117.6 million at the box office.
Will the show be like the film?
(c) Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection
Almost 30 years later, The Rainmaker‘s themes of health insurance negligence and the unfair power of any company wealthy enough to hire a prestigious law firm remain sadly relevant. But a few elements have changed in between the film and movie.
The show’s set-up is not quite the same as the film’s: while the film’s Baylor simply can’t find a job after law school, the new Baylor lands a job at a prestigious law firm headed by Slattery’s Leo Drummond — only to be fired on the first day.
Other changes from the film relate to Bruiser, the sketchy lawyer who gives Baylor a chance — while the character’s gender has been changed from male to female, Bruiser also seems to stay on as a character throughout the show (unlike in the film, where Bruiser ran off to the Bahamas to go into hiding).
Baylor also has a girlfriend on the series, a fellow lawyer named Sarah (Madison Iseman). But the cast does include Kelly Riker (Robyn Cara), who ends up as Baylor’s love interest in the film, so it remains to be seen exactly what form the characters’ love lives will take.
Was The Rainmaker the last major movie Coppola directed?
(c) Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection
Aside from being one of Matt Damon’s big early breaks, there’s another reason The Rainmaker was notable — it’s the last major, mainstream movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola. After changing Hollywood forever with 1972’s The Godfather, Coppola spent over two decades as one of the biggest names in film, directing hits like 1979’s Apocalypse Now and 1983’s The Outsiders.
However, by the ’90s, Coppola suffered a number of critical disappointments for films like 1990’s The Godfather Part III and 1996’s Jack. And following The Rainmaker, he withdrew from conventional filmmaking altogether.
In 2024, Coppola told Rolling Stone that the film was a makeshift swansong for his directing career. “People don’t understand that after I made The Rainmaker, I sort of quit for 14 years. I literally said, ‘I’m going to stop being a professional director, and I’m going to just be a student for a while. I’m going to try to understand what making movies is.’ And I did that by self-financing some very small, low-budget movies,” he said.
In that 14-year span, Coppola only made three movies: Youth Without Youth, Tetro, and Twixt.
“People said, ‘You fell off the map. Those films were not successful.’ They weren’t meant to be successful,” he added. “They were meant to teach me what making movies really was. And I learned a lot during that period about acting.”
Coppola’s latest film was 2024’s Megalopolis, a commercial and critical flop.
You can stream 1997’s The Rainmaker on Paramount+.