Percy vs Goliath: Film Review

Cast: Christopher Walken, Christina Ricci, Zach Braff, Martin Donovan, Roberta Maxwell

Director: Clark Johnson

You've seen a story like Percy vs Goliath before.

It's the tale of one man taking on a multinational conglomerate and the abuse of power.

From Russell Crowe's whistleblower against the cigarette industry in The Insider to the foreign stylings of Woman At War, the genre is not a new one for independent films to explore, and slap on a Based on a True Story opening.

Where Percy vs Goliath has an ace up its sleeve in Christopher Walken, it also has one in its director, the former Homicide: Life on the Street star turned director, Clark Johnson.

Walken stars as Percy Schmeiser, a midwestern farmer, who's spent generations sowing his own seeds and salvaging his own stock to resow year after year. However, when large conglomerate Monsanto finds traces of their patented GMO seeds in his fields, he's taken to court for breaching their copyright and stealing their crops, a seed saver who's seemingly broken the law.

But with generations of seed-saving in his genes, Schmeiser refuses to give in, and takes on the big corporation, despite all the evidence seemingly against him, and with all the lawyers in the world lined up against him...

It's fairly obvious where Percy vs Goliath is going.

However, while Johnson peppers his screen with bucolic shots of rolling fallowed fields, and of mountains and fills the film with well-shot courtroom sequences, he never loses sight of the Schmeisers and the toll their just cause takes.

Walken is suitably restrained when needed, and pained throughout, but an understated performance and a bond with Maxwell is well-performed and gives the film a credence and humanity it needs to avoid the usual trappings of the genre. 

The one minor misstep is a trip to India that seems out of touch with the smaller man mentality, but it's clearly an attempt to show there are global implications to the fight against GMO.

All in all, Percy vs Goliath is a small triumph of a film that transcends its genre expectations, and delivers them solidly yet formulaically. Thanks to Walken's watchability and a script that just about makes all the right moves, it's an entertaining 90 minutes of film, a type of which you've seen a million times before, but still proves to be an enjoyable genre to mine.