Starring Matt Damon, Danny DeVito, Jon Voight and Claire Danes Directed by Francis Ford Coppola Rated PG-13, with profanity and graphic violence Running time 133 minutes We give this film a rating of 8 out of 10

(Nov. 21, 1997) -- Let's talk about silk purses and sows' ears. Let's talk about John Grisham's The Rainmaker.

Or, as the movie company would have it, John Grisham's The Rainmaker. That's the official title of the film Francis Ford Coppola has made from Grisham's bestselling novel.

(It's really only a small step to the point at which each book title must include his name. So it won't just be More Sleazy Lawyers by John Grisham. It will be John Grisham's More Sleazy Lawyers by John Grisham -- perhaps with this grace note: "a John Grisham novel.")

Well, it certainly makes it easier to figure out who to blame for these slow-moving, sludge-filled stinkers.

Thankfully, John Grisham's The Rainmaker is a better movie than Grisham's tension-challenged novel. Coppola may be doing this for the payday (in order to finance his next original film), but he manages to elevate Grisham's overblown story to a passably entertaining courtroom drama which, unlike the book, actually has some drama.

The story remains approximately the same. A neophyte lawyer, Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon), winds up working at a low-rent law firm when he can find no other job after finishing law school in Memphis. The only thing he has going for him is an insurance case: a young man, dying of leukemia, who has been wrongfully denied a bone-marrow transplant by his insurance company.

But getting that case to court will be like running the high hurdles with his feet cut off. For starters, Rudy has no trial experience -- and the insurance company has the high-powered Leo Drummond (Jon Voight) and three or four of his assistants for the defense.

For another thing, Rudy has only just passed the bar exam; he doesn't even have his license. He's driving around with all of his belongings in his car because he's been evicted -- and winds up renting an apartment from a client for whom he's writing a will (in exchange for yard work).

What Rudy has going for him, of course, is the power of being right. The insurance company has been acting in bad faith -- callously so. Their actions will end up costing his client his life. The anger at their heartlessness fuels Rudy with a sense of unquenchable self-righteousness.

Even as he is preparing for the trial, Rudy is getting involved in another kind of case. While cruising for clients at a local hospital, he spots a young woman (Claire Danes) who has been brutally beaten by her husband. He befriends her, and by film's end he is emotionally involved with her, in an effort to get her out of this abusive marriage.

Coppola, who adapted the novel for his screenplay, understands that Grisham lards his novels in the same way Tom Clancy does -- with all kinds of irrelevant or overwritten back-story, among other things. Coppola jettisons, for example, the lengthy job search Rudy goes through, plunging us directly into the story at a point where Grisham (who must be paid by the word) had frittered away 100 pages.

He also understands that Grisham created a story in which the end is never in doubt. Rudy faces so little friction in the novel that an ingrown toenail would have qualified as a jolt of genuine jeopardy.

Coppola, while hewing to Grisham's basic plot, turns the courtroom portion of the story into something more like a roller coaster ride. Rather than smooth cruising, Rudy repeatedly runs into bumps and potholes -- including his own inexperience in a trial setting.

He draws a skillful and sympathetic performance out of Damon as Rudy, one that captures his intellectual strengths and raw-boned rookie quality at the same time. He also gives Voight the best villain role he has played this year (and he's played a bunch of them): a sleek, sharklike lawyer who doesn't need to twitch or overact to show off the power he trades in.

The rest of the cast is equally strong -- from Mary Kay Place as the tough-minded mother of the stricken victim, to Danny DeVito as Rudy's assistant, a would-be attorney who has failed the bar six times and refers to himself as "a paralawyer." Even the usually self-indulgent Mickey Rourke makes a good showing as Rudy's oily boss.

The Rainmaker isn't a great movie, but it is an involving and compelling one. Given the weakness of the short material, that's nothing short of miraculous.