Percy vs. Goliath

I like a good underdog story so I went to see Percy vs. Goliath, a movie which pits a small independent farmer against a behemoth agribusiness corporation, last night and I found it very charming.  Percy Schmeiser (Christopher Walken) and his wife Louise (Roberta Maxwell) have a small canola farm, passed down from generations of his family, in Bruno, Saskatchewan.  Every year he harvests the seeds from the sturdiest plants in order to use them the following year just as his ancestors once did.  In 1998 he is accused of using Monsanto's genetically modified seeds without a license and then saving them to use again.  Monsanto sues him for patent infringement and demands the value of all of the crops grown from the seeds for the past several years.  He contends that the seeds from his neighbor's farm accidentally ended up on his and refuses to settle.  He hires an inexperienced but idealistic lawyer named Jackson Weaver (Zach Braff) and the case attracts the attention of Rebecca Salcau (Christina Ricci), an environmental activist, who uses Schmeiser shamelessly to gain publicity for her organization's fight against Monsanto.  They eventually take the case to the Provincial Court of Appeals, which brings Schmeiser to the brink of bankruptcy, and then, when he receives support from farmers around the world, to the Supreme Court of Canada.  This movie is based on a true story and it is incredibly inspiring with quite a few stand up and cheer moments.  My favorite is when a nervous Weaver gives an impassioned speech to the Supreme Court after watching a phalanx of Monsanto lawyers enter the building.  Walken is extremely appealing in the role (I sometimes forget that, despite his penchant for giving campy and eccentric performances, he is a very good actor) and I was surprisingly invested in his plight considering the outcome of the case is basically a foregone conclusion.  The visuals, which feature many wide shots of the open prairie, are absolutely stunning.  The message is sometimes a bit heavy-handed and the stakes are not as high as in the much better Dark Waters, but this is highly enjoyable and I recommend it.