“What’s the difference between a hooker and a lawyer? A hooker will stop screwing you after you’re dead.”

I don’t think any true fan of cinema really likes it when a vital filmmaker is forced to resort to working in the factory system as a hired gun. There are many directors who make it through their entire careers without ever creating a single piece of art, and still more who do have a personal style but don’t make it to the big leagues—and there’s no great shame in either of those cases; we’ve all got to make a living—but it certainly is a shame when a unique talent that had burned so brightly is suppressed by whatever circumstance.

And yet, there’s still something to be said for the consummate professional who’s willing to keep their chin up and paint by the numbers without encapsulating their bitterness in the final product. So while I’d much rather be able to look back and see an unbroken string of films with Francis Ford Coppola’s personal stamp on them, the fact is that for a number of years he was taking on projects to pay back millions in debt.

In The Rainmaker, he adapts a courtroom novel written by John Grisham, about an overwhelmed but determined young lawyer fresh off the bar (Matt Damon) who is convinced to take on a sketchy insurance company when they deny a claim that would have given a dying young man (Johnny Whitworth) life-saving medical care.

As he learns anti-lessons from his ambulance chaser boss (Mickey Rourke) and his streetwise paralegal sidekick (Danny DeVito), the young idealist also finds time to fall in love with an abused wife (Claire Danes). The supporting roles of judges, plaintiffs, lawyers, and executives are ably filled out by Mary Kay Place, Teresa Wright, Jon Voight, Dean Stockwell, Danny Glover, Virginia Madsen, and Roy Scheider, and Coppola uses sparse but rich voiceover narration from Damon (written by Michael Herr) to tie everything together.

This is something you’d expect Coppola could make blindfolded and handcuffed—the contemporary legal thriller formula had already been proven out by A Few Good Men, The Firm, The Client, Sleepers, and others (which is likely why this barely made back its budget)—and if it lacks a signature moment, it’s still an eminently watchable drama peppered with veteran actors who seem to be having a good time (especially DeVito, who, given some additional screen time, might have stolen the entire thing from the young Damon).