Minamata

Silkwood and Erin Brockovich are among the best-known dramas about the catastrophic human cost of corporate negligence, and this illuminating eco-movie is firmly in the same tradition. Johnny Depp stars as revered wartime photojournalist W Eugene Smith, who was persuaded to decamp to Japan in 1971 to document the crippling effects of mercury poisoning on the citizens of coastal Minamata. Smith is no saint and his transformation proves convincing, as he goes from a pill-popping, drunken recluse haunted by his past to a committed chronicler of the devastation wrought by the dumping of toxic waste. It's a redemption story, but thankfully sentimentality is generally kept at bay: the reality and the unsparing photographic record are just too harrowing. Depp delivers one of his more subtle performances and there's solid support from Minami and Hiroyuki Sanada as local activists, and Bill Nighy delivers a strong cameo as the Life magazine editor driven to the edge by Smith's mercurial antics.