Review: "Tommy's Honour"

It is a hard thing to pursue greatness, and a harder thing still to do so as the son of a great man.

After all, if one fails to achieve parity with your father -- the most likely outcome, given the odds of talent, drive and circumstance combining in just the right way -- then you are forever destined to be forgotten as the footnote in his shadow.

But then there is the remoter possibility: surpassing him. Then you must contend with watching the man who raised you knocked down a peg in the eyes of not just everyone else, but your own.

“Tommy’s Honour” is a marvelous movie about a pair of great 19th century Scottish golfers, Thomas Morris Sr. and Thomas Morris Jr. They are famous throughout the United Kingdom and beyond, known simply as Old Tom and Young Tom.

They competed together in set matches against other players, each won multiple championships in the early years of what is now the British Open, pioneered new equipment and strategies, built and played on some of the most storied courses in the world.

Old Tom is generally regarded as the founding father of the modern game. And Young Tom? He was simply the best player the world had seen until that time.

The film is directed by Jason Connery, son of Sean, whom you may have heard of. Did a bit of acting in his day, retired now, reputedly an enthusiastic golfer throughout his life. You can see the appeal the tale of the Morrises held for the younger Connery.

The screenplay is by Pamela Marin and Kevin Cook, based on Cook’s 2007 book of the same title. It combines a sense of history, a love of the game and above all an appreciation for the difficult, bittersweet relationship father and son shared.

Old Tom (Peter Mullan) is very much a product of his time. He is beholden and deferential to the wealthy gentlemen who comprise the Prestwick Golf Club, where he is employed as chief caddie, greens keeper and proprietor of the golf shop. He literally carved the course himself out of the Scottish scrublands, and operates as sort of the local patron saint of golf. But as the story opens, he’s going on 50 and his game has started to fall off.

Meanwhile, 15-year-old Tommy (Jack Lowden) is a prodigy and the captain of the club (Sam Neill) and the rest want him to enter competitions on their behalf. In this day, players competed against each other, generally 1-on-1 or matched pairs, with the club members putting up and collecting most of the stakes.

Tommy impertinently refuses to knuckle under to the gentry, believing those who play and win the game deserve most of the spoils. He envisions a new role, the professional golfer who plays from course to course, unruled by those who would appoint themselves master of the game.

As the years pass and his reputation grows, Old Tom continues to be embarrassed by Young Tom’s upstart ways. His wooing of Margaret, a servant a decade his senior played by Ophelia Lovibond, vexes his parents further, especially after her past reputation is found to be wanting.

I loved the dichotomy between the two men. Lithe, fair-haired and handsome -- nearly pretty -- Young Tom’s mien and happy-go-lucky demeanor mask a man of tremendous determination and passion.

Mullan’s broad, beautiful face, bushy beard and stocky block of a man is an exercise in subtle stoicism. Watching his son take, and make, a daring shot, Old Tom’s face seems to move not a twitch. But oh, the eyes are smiling.

In truth, I’d rather do just about anything than play golf. “A good walk, spoiled,” said Samuel Clemens, and none have said it better. In its modern conception, I can think of few things that waste as much money, time and patience as golf.

But here’s a beautiful movie about father and son who were both divided and bound together by the game. I’ve read that it only rained one day during the shooting of “Tommy’s Honour,” which if you know Scotland practically constitutes a miracle.

Video review: "War Horse"

"War Horse" got an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture -- plus five other nods -- but little real love. Box office receipts were respectable but hardly stratospheric. The film won virtually none of the various awards for which it was nominated.

The best way to describe the reception given to "War Horse" was one of respectful indifference.

While hardly one of Steven Spielberg's best directorial efforts, "War Horse" certainly deserves better than the miserly regard it's been afforded. It's a lush family drama, sad but redemptive, the sort of ambitious old-fashioned movie-making not seen in great quantities for at least half a century.

As a bonus, the musical score, by constant Spielberg companion John Williams, is one of his best in years.

The star of the story is Joey, a brilliantly fast and spirited horse from England who becomes the object of affection for a variety of people leading up to and during World War I. At first he's the ward of Albert (Jeremy Irvine), a poor farm boy, but then Joey is conscripted into the British cavalry.

As the years roll by and the horrors mount up, Joey's fortunes change as often as the landscape, from rolling French countryside to the nightmarish labyrinth of trench warfare.

Even though the film lacks anything resembling suspense, it's still a fantastically emotional ride.

Video extras are good, though there's a wide chasm between the single-disc DVD edition and the top-of-the-line Blu-ray/DVD combo.

The DVD comes with a single featurette, "War Horse: The Look," which concentrates on how Spielberg and his crew achieved the suffused, painterly look of the film.

Upgrade to the two-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo, and you add two more features. There's a making-of documentary featuring Spielberg and all the cast, and a featurette about the making of the movie from the perspective of an extra.

Go for the four-disc package, and there are four more featurettes. "A Filmmaking Journey" concentrates on Spielberg's artistic journey making the movie. Another focuses on producer and longtime Spielberg collaborator Kathleen Kennedy, including her personal on-set photographs. Two more featurettes focus on editing and scoring, and sound effects.

Movie: B-plus
Extras: B

Review: "War Horse"

For a male weepie, "War Horse" doesn't shy away from what it is. Most such films hide behind a veneer of sports or other manly pursuits in spinning a tale that is designed to reduce every guy watching it to sobs.

But Steven Spielberg's new drama has all the ingredients: fathers and sons struggling to relate, brothers caught up in conflict, soldiers trading kindness amidst the bloodletting, gentle grandfathers and, especially, boys and their beloved animals.

Tears, commence being expertly jerked.

(This is not to imply that women won't weep at it -- I'm sure they will, in bucketfuls. It's just this is the rare weepie specially designed to stimulate Y-chromosome tear ducts.)

What "War Horse" does not have is a romantic component, and for that I am grateful. It's so tiresome to sit through Hollywood movies that seem to throw in a love interest for no reason at all other than brazen demographic appeal (see "Captain America: The First Avenger" for an especially egregious example).

Despite its nearly 2½-hour run time, the movie does not dally unnecessarily, on pitching unneeded woo or anything else.

The titular horse is Joey, the finest thoroughbred in all of England, who was bought for a princely sum by a broken-down old drunk of a farmer (Peter Mullan). Alas, as a result of shelling out 30 guineas for the dappled colt, the farmer does not have the money to pay his sniveling landlord (David Thewlis), who desired the horse for himself.

Of course, wiry thoroughbreds are not terribly useful for plowing fields, but the farmer's headstrong son Albert (Jeremy Irvine) insists he can train Joey to pull a tiller. This sets off the first of many great love affairs, with Joey the perpetual object of affection.

World War I arrives, and Joey is sold off to the British cavalry, breaking Albert's heart. Luckily, the lieutenant who purchases the horse to be his personal mount (Tom Hiddleston) is fine and upstanding, and promises to honor Joey with the same affection Albert did.

Alas, many things go awry during wartime. Over the next four years, Joey finds himself changing masters frequently, with prospects that rise and fall with the capricious whims of war.

For a time he is under the charge of a kindly teenage German soldier (David Kross) and his underage brother. Later, he comes into the embracing arms of a young French girl (Celine Buckens) and her wise, nurturing grandfather (Niels Arestrup).

But Joey also gets conscripted into toting massive cannons, a duty where most horses only last a month or two before collapsing and receiving a merciful bullet. And he becomes trapped in the horrors of the trench war -- a nightmarish landscape of mud, barbed wire and blood.

Based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo, the screenplay by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis -- which also draws inspiration from the Broadway play that won a raft of Tony awards earlier this year -- hits all the expected beats. But despite these rarely arriving without much surprise (one knows exactly how the film will end the entire way), they still hold a rapturous emotional pull -- assisted by John Williams' stirring score of lush strings.

Visually, "War Horse" is quite arresting. Spielberg and his longtime cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, intentionally strike an audacious note, composing scenes of suffused color and almost painterly beauty. The effect is theatrical, with the artifice of the visuals drawing the movie out of the grim reality of war and into something like fairy tale lightness.

Because, ultimately, "War Horse" is a children's movie, or something very much like it. It appeals more to the senses and the heart than the mind. Eventually, one has to choose whether to submit to its blatant, wonderfully sad manipulations. I'm glad I did.

3.5 stars out of four