Erin Brockovich may not be the sexiest title of the year, but then again 'Julia Roberts is Erin Brockovich', as the poster shouts.

Roberts suffered a long fallow period with such duds as Pret-a-Porter and Mary Reilly, becoming too reliant (like Matt Damon and Tom Cruise) on her widescreen smile. However, last year's Notting Hill opened up new possibilities in a performance that revealed previously untapped comic assurance and vulnerability.

Erin Brockovich finds her teaming up with the ever unpredictable director Steven Soderbergh, a maverick talent from independent film-making roots who has since dabbled in the arthouse and revived George Clooney's movie career with the hot, hot thriller Out Of Sight.

Now the chameleon Soderbergh tries his hand at yet another mode of movie: the star vehicle for the Hollywood major league player. Roberts responds with a feisty, funny and seriously sexy performance in Pretty Woman tradition, but one that also manages to strip away the starry gloss.

And she needs to, because Erin Brockovich is based on a true story of a twice-divorced single mother with three children, big hair, an even bigger cleavage, Barbie doll clothes, but no job, no qualifications, no hope and all of 16 dollars in her bank account.

Rating: 15 Duration: 133minutes Reviewed: April 7, 2000

After a car crash leaves her with a big bill, this former Miss Wichita turns on the charm to talk her forthright way into a filing job with her attorney, Ed Masry (Albert Finney), whereupon she happens on medical records relating to a small-town community blighted by cancer and rotten health. Contaminated water is the root cause, and soon Erin's investigations are pointing the finger at corporate power players Pacific Gas & Electric.

The ensuing case, tackling a company hell bent on covering its tracks, becomes as much a personal crusade for Erin as a fight for justice and compensation for underdog America. Putting a community before her own family has its own cost, damaging both her relationship with her children and biker boyfriend George (Aaron Eckhart).

Aided by Soderbergh's uncomplicated, trick-free direction and Susannah Grant's sassy, surprisingly unsentimental screenplay, Erin Brockovich refuses to play to cheesy Hollywood rules. Roberts's Erin is a whirlwind, confrontational, audacious and, as in Notting Hill, her performance is all the better for not worrying about being unpopular at times. She is hot stuff at the one-liner jibes too.

Finney's phlegmatic Masry, avuncular and bedazzled, is an amusing foil. After sparking the electricity between Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in Out Of Sight, Soderbergh has come up with another winning combination: Albert and the leonine Roberts.