Review: "12 Mighty Orphans"

 

"12 Mighty Orphans" is an old-school sports movie based on a true(y) story that plays its cards straight down the line -- too straight, if you ask me.

Back in 1938 a Texas orphanage formed a football team with just a dozen boys, giving hope to the Depression masses as they turned people's heads, fought their way to the state championship game and changed the way the sport was played forever. 

It's inspiring stuff with rousing action, technically well-made and sure to draw a tear or two from the audience. It shares a lot of the DNA of "Hoosiers," as castoff hicks are dismissed by the titans of the sport, a troubled coach is brought in from outside the community and, after butting heads with some of the local powers-that-be, forges the players into a tribe of warriors.

There's even a drunkard assistant coach a la Dennis Hopper, played here by Martin Sheen, who also serves as narrator.

Director Ty Roberts ("The Iron Orchard") co-wrote the screenplay with Lane Garrison and Kevin Meyer based on the book by sports author Jim Dent. Together they've built a movie that is completely impervious to irony and subtlety. All the Texans say what they mean and mean what they say, and each of the boys falls into a pretty predictable "type," as do the supporting adult characters.

The actors deliver the dialogue with all the heartfelt conviction they can muster, particularly Luke Wilson as head coach Rusty Russell. But it often registers as hammy and stilted, one cornpone bit of soothsaying merging into the next.

This movie plays earnest as all hell, but scores no points of originality.

It takes place at the Fort Worth Masonic Home, which in the 1930s housed about 150 boys and girls ranging from tykes to near-grownups. Some were orphans whose parents were dead, but many were simply abandoned by folks who couldn't afford to feed them in the wake of the Dust Bowl.

Russell, who was nearly blinded in the Great War and later had success with other sports teams, is recruited as a teacher and to build a football program from scratch. His wife, Juanita (Vinessa Shaw), is brought in as English teacher and to do supportive wifey things while staying firmly relegated to the background.

Things follow a pretty standard route. First they have to overcome the lack of a field or equipment, then get the students academically eligible to play, and finally convince the Texas football A-league to admit them as a team. After all that plays out, they're left with just the titular dozen players, none who have football experience or are big enough for traditional toughman play.

Sheen plays Doc, the over-the-hill doctor and good soul who's looked upon as a father figure by most of the orphans, who tends to split lips and strained knees, in between constantly nipping at his breast pocket whiskey.

It's tough to create 12 distinctive characters for each of the kids, so three or four get star billing and the rest sort of fade into a Greek chorus -- including the two Latino students, which seems a very un-woke choice these days. 

There's Snoggs (Jacob Lofland), the scrawny but scrappy kid who really has no business on a gridiron; dashing Fairbanks (Levi Dylan), nicknamed after the movie star, constantly chased by girls off the field and by opposing players on it; and Wheatie (Slade Monroe), the gritty natural leader who becomes quarterback by default.

The spotlight falls mostly on Hardy Brown, played by Jake Austin Walker, who's not that big but hits like a sledgehammer. Brought to the orphanage in the opening act after witnessing his father murdered -- Hardy's overalls still sticky with his blood -- he is the sullen troublemaker who gets into fights with the other orphans, joins the team under protest and, of course, will become the most fervent team-firster by the end.

(A note on historical accuracy: the real Hardy Brown did indeed go on to a 12-year NFL career as a feared tackler, though he was too young to play on the 1938 orphans team and his father's death occurred when he was little. By Hollywood norms, these are fairly standard deviations from recorded reality.) 

A couple of rival newspaper men, including one played by Treat Williams, help get the word out about the Mighty Mites aka orphan team, at one point even enlisting the help of FDR himself to help overcome some cattywampus sports bureaucracy. Robert Duvall turns up in a too-short cameo as a school booster.

There are two main villains. Wayne Knight plays Frank Wynn, who runs the "day-to-day" at the school, meaning he has sign-making class that is basically a child-labor operation, and he carries a big wooden paddle that he swings freely with the boys in the name of discipline, but enjoys a tad too much. Screenwriter/actor Garrison plays Luther, head of the rival Polytechnic school team, a football snob who's constantly rubbing Russell's face in his lack of resources or talent, though the bait is amiably refused.

As screen heavies go, there's the top, there's over the top and then there's over the top of the top, which is where these guys fly. Luther wears a Hitler haircut and sports John Lennon sunglasses, a little twerp braggart sucking on phallic stogies, and seems like a time-traveling alien who picked up bad habits from every era.

Frank has the mustache to go with Luther's hair, though if his mustachios were a bit longer I think he might start twirling them. He's always sweaty and stooped, a foot shorter than the orphans he terrorizes, and we're just waiting around for his uppance to come. 

I don't want to pick on Knight, who's had a lovely career, but he's transparently doing a (more) evil version of his Newman character from "Seinfeld," and even whips out the tittering laugh. This is a situation where you look to director Roberts to step in to protect his actor and his movie against bad choices, and he didn't.

The football action, and there's quite a lot of it, is staged very well with plenty of kinetic mayhem. This is back in the day before face guards or body padding, and the players are basically hurling themselves into a brick wall on each down. I also liked the portrayal of Russell's innovation of what became known as the spread or motion offense, using the whole field and putting more emphasis on speed and skill than just sheer size.

"12 Mighty Orphans" is far from a bad movie. My guess is most sports film fans will cheer for it more than I did. To me, it's the storytelling equivalent of the anachronistic way of playing ball the orphans overcame: line it up, plow straight ahead and hope for glory.

Video review: "The Judge"

One of my favorite pieces of obscure movie dialogue is from “Casablanca.” An old German married couple is practicing their halting English before leaving for America, and the husband asks her the time. “Liebchen, what watch?” “Ten watch.” “Such much?”

I thought of this while watching “The Judge,” a dramatic star vehicle for Robert Downey Jr., which he also produced. It has a solid premise and terrific performances by Downey and Robert Duvall (who deservedly earned an Oscar nomination for his work). But the movie is so overloaded with secondary characters and needless subplots the main dynamic is left weakened.

This is an ambitious film that suffers from a case of “such much.”

Downey plays Hank Palmer, a big-city attorney summoned back to his tiny backward Indiana hometown after the death of his mother. He and his dad, Joseph (Duvall), a prominent local judge, have never seen eye-to-eye, and it would seem that after the unpleasantness of the funeral they are both fully prepared to never speak again.

Then the judge is accused of deliberately running down the town miscreant – whom he sent to prison long ago – and Hank must defend him in court against a high-roller prosecutor (Billy Bob Thornton) brought in special to bring the elder Palmer down. The latter half or so of the movie is dominated by the trial, with all three actors spouting crackling dialogue and chewing the scenery. Good stuff.

But then there’s “the other.” An old flame of Hank’s (Vera Farmiga) now runs the local bar and seems to have an open window to his innermost psyche. His brothers are a cantankerous ex-pro baseball prospect and a feeble-minded boy/man who makes 8mm movies. Hank’s estranged daughter shows up for a visit. And a young town chick is looking for a hookup. And the prosecutor’s got a personal grudge against the Palmers. And it goes on.

Director David Dobkin and screenwriter Nick Schenk keep piling on the tertiary material, until the weight of it threatens to topple the delicate balance of volatile personalities that are the core of the film’s ample appeal.

“The Judge” is still worth watching, if only to see these veteran actors ply their craft. But when it comes to storytelling, sometimes having “such much” results in subtraction by addition.

Bonus features are merely adequate. The DVD has only a single featurette, “Getting Deep With Dax Shepard” (who has a small, funny part as an inept local attorney). Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack and you add a commentary track by Dobkin (so disappointing not to have Downey along for the ride!) plus deleted scenes with their own commentary.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "The Judge"

“The Judge” has all the hallmarks of a labor of love, and all the weaknesses. It features a couple of top-notch performances but it’s overlong and meandering, including a lot of stuff better left on the cutting room floor -- or better yet, in the screenwriters’ wastebasket.

The film stars Robert Downey Jr., who is the producer and put the project together with his wife, Susan, to create a legal drama in the vein of “The Verdict” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Unlike “The Verdict,” which was a character piece that should’ve won Paul Newman an Oscar, “The Judge” is more of a star vehicle for Downey to do what he does best.

We’ve seen him play this character for a while now, which is a variation on Downey’s own star persona -- super-smart guy, light-speed verbosity, can be alternately charming and bullying, a fundamentally good man who sometimes has to convince others, and himself, of that fact.

In this iteration he is Hank Palmer, a high-powered attorney who escaped his hated tiny hometown of Carlinville, Ind., but is called back after a tragedy, and then must deal with another. His opposite is his father, Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall), an upstanding local judge for the past 42 years who regards Hank as an unwanted guest. There’s obviously an ocean of bad blood between these two.

Nick Schenk wrote the screenplay, later fixed up by Bill Dubuque, from a story that director David Dobkin and Downey (uncredited) came up with. Dobkin is a curious choice, known entirely for comedies both good (“Wedding Crashers”) and not so much (“Fred Claus”).

I think Dobkin needed to stand up to his star/boss a little more, and reel in some of the more sprawling aspects of the story and Downey’s performance. Downey is an amped-up powerhouse of a performer, much in the vein of John Malkovich, and left to his own devices tends to chew up the scenery. He does enjoy a few quieter moments where he’s just reacting to people or circumstances, and those are his best in the movie.

(Full disclosure: I interviewed Dobkin and Downey for a local TV station at the Indianapolis premiere, and had to miss the first 10 minutes or so of the movie to do so.)

Duvall is just splendid, and his performance only seems to grow sharper as the movie goes on. Judge Palmer is cussed and cantankerous, and demonstrates little superficial love to his two other sons, Glen (Vincent D’Onofrio), a former baseball prospect gone to seed, and Dale (Jeremy Strong), the mentally impaired baby who spends most of his time fiddling with 8mm film. To Hank, he shows only open hostility.

Things grow more complicated when the judge is charged with running down a man on a bicycle with his car, and Hank is eventually brought in to defend him, after the local yokel attorney/antique dealer (Dax Shepard) proves spectacularly unequal to the task.

The last half of the movie is mostly taken up by the trial, as Hank faces off with a slick prosecutor brought in special from Gary named Dwight Dickham (an intimidating Billy Bob Thornton), who seems to bear some kind of grudge against the Palmers.

There’s a strong through-line of a narrative in “The Judge,” but also way too many unnecessary elements. We’ve got Hank hooking up with an old flame (Vera Farmiga), who adores Hank for all his faults, including “that hyper-verbal vomit thing you do” -- which is a much better description of this Downey trait than the one I gave above.

And there’s drama about the dashing of Glen’s major league dreams, the death of the judge’s wife, a nasty old criminal case that haunts the current proceedings, a visit from Hank’s daughter, a kittenish bartender at the local pub (Leighton Meester) who hooks up with him and is later revealed to be … well, it’s just creepy.

There’s a lot good going on in “The Judge.” But at 141 minutes it needed a serious editing trim and/or screenplay rethink to hone it down. The essence is a triangle story with Downey, Duvall and Thornton each supporting one leg, and you don’t really need anything beyond that to muddy things up.

Reeling Backward: "Joe Kidd" (1972)

Later generations knew Elmore Leonard primarily as a novelist whose books often were turned into movies ("Out of Sight," "Get Shorty"), but during the 1970s and '80s he was fairly busy writing original screenplays. This includes, God help him, "High Noon, Part II: The Return of Will Kane," starring Lee Majors in the Gary Cooper role.

Goes to show that even the best of us sometimes do stuff just for a paycheck.

In that vein, I'm not sure what to make of "Joe Kidd," a 1972 Western actioner starring Clint Eastwood. By all accounts Leonard was inspired by a real-life Mexican movement to reclaim their ancestral lands from Anglo hands, which led to the storming of a New Mexico courthouse. Leonard switched it around to the turn of the century in fictional Sinola County and introduced the main character, a former bounty hunter who gets caught up in the conflict between Mexican revolutionary Luis Chama (John Saxson) and rich land baron Frank Harlan (Robert Duvall).

In 1972 Eastwood was so big he practically had his own gravitational pull, so I have no doubt the story got shifted around considerably from its original script. Although it starts out on a twist, with Kidd dressed up like a dandy and rotting in jail for a drunken binge, he soon takes on the prototypical Eastwood mantle: a man of few words and considerable skill at killing ... and humiliating others.

Plot-wise, there's not much there there. Chama rides into town and briefly holds the sheriff (Gregory Walcott) and judge hostage, burning up the deeds held by settlers to what they claim are their land. A posse is formed to catch him and his gang, but returns unsuccessful -- largely due to the absence of Kidd, a seasoned tracker.

Harlan arrives with a large entourage of men carrying high-end rifles with scopes and other newfangled weapons. He takes over the entire second floor of the hotel, throwing out the existing guests in the process, and tries to enlist Kidd as his guide for $500. Sensing a murderers' row, he declines. But upon learning that Chama raided his own farm of some horses, he returns and accepts the offer (after doubling the price).

Along their way they encounter Helen (Stella Garcia), who participated in the courthouse invasion and would appear to be Chama's squeeze. Kidd keeps silent about his knowledge of her relationship to their quarry, apparently willing to go along so he can get his own revenge on Chama and collect $1,000 in the process.

But when they happen across a small village of Mexicans, Harlan takes the entire town hostage and threatens to shoot five people every few hours until Chama gives himself up. The egotistical Chama refuses to do this, claiming their movement will die with them, but Kidd "convinces" him to turn himself into the sheriff, offering his help to get him there safely. This leads to the final, inevitable and rather dull shootout.

Kidd has a tendency to get into hassles over nothing, which keep coming back to bite him. He assaults another prisoner while in jail because the man refused him coffee during his hangover, and later has to kill him when it comes back on him. (He turns out to be one of Chama's man, another reason for tension between them.)

He also has a running feud with Lamarr, one of Harlan's junior flunkies played by Don Stroud. Lamarr, referred to as "Kid" by his fellows, is a hot-headed ingrate whose combat skills aren't on par with his ability to antagonize. He carries around a fancy repeating pistol to which he can attach a wooden stock to turn it into a serviceable long-distance rifle. Kidd, after showing up Lamarr several times and finally dispatching him for good, uses it to scatter Harlan's men while making good his escape.

(The Internet Movie Firearms Database, with which I have recently become acquainted, claims this to be a C96 "Broomhandle" Mauser, and also that it can only hold a 10-round clip -- though the movie depicts it as being able to spray an entire village several times.)

There's also a totally superfluous love interest played by Lynne Marta, Harlan's kept woman whom he keeps around for sex. There's a funny, goofy scene where she and Kidd meet in the hotel, and he just saunters into her room and starts kissing her with barely a few words passing between them. I know Eastwood was a big sex symbol 40 years ago, but you've got to at least provide some semblance of an invitation before he starts mackin' on the ladies. Otherwise it's just creepy.

Director John Sturges knew a thing or two about Westerns ("The Magnificent Seven"), but his and Leonard's storytelling skills are strangely flat here. None of the characters really makes any sort of impact -- Chama only gets a couple of dialogue scenes, Duvall gives Harlan a sort of matter-of-fact ruthlessness that's not really hateful, and Kidd is just another empty vessel for Eastwood to inhabit with his squinty glares and pistol-work.

By Leonard's own account the actors were intimidated by the legendary director and didn't initiate any of the regular push-and-pull of the collaborative filmmaking process. Personally, I don't think Leonard just wanted to admit that his script stank. According to legend the finale where Kidd drives a train through the Sinola saloon was a lark suggested by a producers as a joke, and not part of anyone's plan.

I believe it, because to watch the film it's hard to believe there was ever much of a scheme at all.

Reeling Backward: "The Eagle Has Landed" (1976)

"The Eagle Has Landed" is a pretty preposterous movie based on a ridiculous premise, but a terrific cast almost pulls it out of the garbage heap. Director John Sturges -- veteran of several terrific pictures including "The Great Escape" and "The Magnificent Seven" -- has a keen eye for composition and knows how to stage action scenes very well.

But this was also his last film, ending his career on something of a sour note (though commercially the movie was quite successful).

I'm not sure what Sturges really could have done with the material, based on a novel by Jack Higgins. The setup is that the Germans come up with a cockamamie plot to kidnap Winston Churchill. In late 1943, the war is considered already lost by most high up in the Third Reich, but they figure capturing the bull of England can at least delay the inevitable for awhile, and increase the morale of the Axis.

Robert Duvall plays Radl, the colonel charged with coming up with a plan to grab Churchill. The idea came from the real-life rescue of Benito Mussolini by German paratroopers from the mountain ski resort where he was being held by the Italians who deposed him.

His commander (Anthony Quayle) gives Radl the assignment out of disgust, calling it a silly joke. Write up a contingency plan so somebody can stick it in the bottom of their desk, is how he puts it. Radl laughs along, but as he pokes into the intelligence he learns that the idea actually has merit. Churchill is scheduled to vacation in the remote (fictional) coastal town of Studley Constable. It would be a simple matter to sneak in a team of soldiers, snatch him up and get out on a disguised ship.

I liked the Radl character quite a lot. A decorated hero, now relegated to unimportant duties by his wounds -- he's missing an eye and, apparently, his left hand is a prosthetic. Duvall gives him a sad, noble quality, the weary soldier who knows he serves a corrupt and loathsome regime but offers his full loyalty nonetheless.

Michael Caine plays Steiner, the disgraced paratrooper colonel selected by Radl to lead the mission. When we first meet Steiner, he and his men are returning from a tough fight on the Soviet front, and encounter German soldiers putting Jews aboard a train.

Inexplicably, Steiner goes into a rage, strikes another officer and helps a woman captive attempt to escape. Instead, she's shot and killed. He and his men are court-martialed and assigned to suicidal duty in the English Chanel, so Radl's offer is their only chance to be regain honor.

Why would a loyal soldier of the Reich object to the well-known plan for the Jews? It's never really made clear, and the Steiner character remains something of a mystery until the end. Caine and Sturges reportedly battled during production, and it resulted in the main character remaining distant and unrelatable.

Donald Pleasence also has a terrific little turn as Heinrich Himmler, who personally authorizes the Eagle mission via a letter signed by Hitler himself, which may or may not be a forgery. It's soon clear that Radl is Himmler's catspaw, to be used and disposed of based on the outcome of the operation.

Donald Sutherland has a corker of a role as Liam Devlin, an IRA insurgent who gets recruited into the mission by the Germans. He's a red-headed charmer and brawler, sent ahead to infiltrate the town as a marsh warden -- a position of dubious meaning to these American ears. He carries a shotgun and patrols the countryside, so I gather he's a constable of some sort.

While spying things out, Devlin falls for local lass Molly (Jenny Agutter), almost 19 and an accomplished equestrian. Their affair is perhaps the most outlandish aspect of the whole over-the-top story. Despite knowing Devlin for a grand total of two days, Molly is somehow willing to betray her countrymen, and even kill one of them, to protect a German spy.

Devlin gets into trouble with a local tough who has a sweet eye on Molly. Upon their first meeting at the local pub, he refused Devlin's offer to buy him a drink. After Devlin pummels the man in a bout of fisticuffs, the old gravedigger throws a bucket of water on the man's face to revive him, and offers the movie's funniest line:

"Well Arthur, looks like he bought you a drink after all!"

The whole cast acquits themselves well, and all of the half-dozen leads are terrific in their roles, even as the script (by Tom Mankiewicz) requires them to do and say some pretty zany stuff.

I should point out that this is a rare World War II movie in which English and American actors play Germans, which makes for some strange audience dynamics as the action plays out. Late in the game we're introduced to an imbecile American reserve colonel played by Larry Hagman, who frets about the war ending without him getting any combat experience.

When he learns about the Churchill plot, he declines to inform his superiors and rushes off with a few men to stop take on the Germans himself. Steiner's seasoned men quickly dispatch the Yanks in a sequence that almost reaches Keystone Kops levels of comedy -- until we remember these are American soldiers fighting and dying (poorly).

The film ends as absurdly as it progressed. Steiner, his entire command decimated, refuses to flee and impersonates an American soldier (Jeff Conaway), continuing the mission to kidnap Churchill, alone. He manages to make it to the mansion where they've hidden him, sneak up and kill him, dying himself moments later when guards arrive.

The young American captain (Treat Williams) marvels at his audacity to single-handedly murder the British leader -- but then we learn that the dead man is the double of the real Churchill, who's actually meeting with FDR and Stalin in Tehran.

In other words, the entire enterprise was a ruse. It's a fitting end for a movie about a made-up plot that was a joke until it became something more.

I loved the cast of "The Eagle Has Landed," but it fails Gene Siskel's test of whether you'd prefer to watch the same people doing almost anything else instead.

Review: "Jack Reacher"

From what I understand, "Jack Reacher" is based on a series of books by Lee Child about a wandering ex-military badass who roams the countryside meting out justice with only the clothes on his back and a toothbrush to his name. Tom Cruise, handsome as ever after recently turning 50, looks like Reacher also has a small army of makeup artists and stylists to give him just the right zhuzh before every fight scene.

He's so smiley and smirky, he practically twinkles. It's one of those movies where whenever the hero walks into a room, every female stops what she's doing to stare at him, like a ribeye being waggled at the pack of solves from "The Grey."

It's a nice action star vehicle for Cruise, though the storytelling is often stolid to the point of stiffness. It plays out like a TV crime procedural with regular interruptions for combat, gradually ratcheting upward from hand-to-hand to assault rifles.

Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote and directed the adaptation, takes his own good time getting things rolling. But once the action gets pushed into high gear roughly midway through, it's a fast-paced thrill ride the rest of the way.

The story's a little zany and not particularly coherent. An ex-Army sniper named James Barr (Joseph Sikora) appears to suddenly snap one day and randomly shoot five strangers in front of the Pittsburgh Pirates stadium. A sharp local police detective named Emerson (David Oyelowo) manages to put the pieces together, including recovering a quarter with Barr's fingerprint out of a parking meter, and makes the arrest.

Before he's attacked by other prisoners and conveniently put into a coma, Barr scribbles "Find Jack Reacher" as his supposed confession.

Reacher, we soon learn, is a ghost. A top military policeman, he suddenly resigned after 20 years in the Army to roam the land, like Caine sans kung fu. He has no fixed address, owns no possessions other than his clothes and a few incidentals, and apparently gets by using his military pension for bus tickets and cheap hotel rooms.

There's a great scene where Emerson and his boss, District Attorney Rodin (Richard Jenkins), are discussing the mystery of Reacher. Usually in these sorts of movies we would immediately cut to a cool intro where we meet the guy they've been talking about doing something astonishingly cool. Instead, Reacher himself walks in the door right at that moment, offering his services.

He gets the brush-off, but Rodin's daughter Helen (Rosamund Pike), who's been appointed as the shooter's attorney, lures him in. It turns out Reacher investigated Barr a few years ago when they were both in the service, but couldn't quite pin the crime on him.

Now he wants a second crack ... until events reveal that Barr may not have been the assassin after all.

It's all confusing and uneven, having something to do with a mercenary corporation that moves from town to town, sucking up government contracts via bribes and intimidation. Soon you learn to stop worrying about the story and just enjoy watching Reacher dispatch his foes with cool, collected aplomb.

Werner Herzog, the great German movie director, turns up as an enigmatic baddy with only a single eye and only slightly more fingers. Herzog is a hoot relating the story of how he lost them, managing to be both goofy and chilling at the same moment. It's like a parody of an action-movie villain, and yet totally effective.

The action scenes are crisply edited, particularly a standout car chase sequence where Reacher is pursuing the bad guys, while in turn the police are pursuing him. As is obligatory in movies of this ilk, Reacher acquires a classic muscle car and then proceeds to slowly destroy it.

The final showdown at a mine pit is similarly well-executed, where Reacher gets an assist from an old Marine sergeant played by Robert Duvall. He and Cruise have a giddy repartee, and the pairing is winning.

I wish I could say the same for Pike, who spends the entire movie wearing a slightly startled expression, as if she can't believe she's starring in a movie with Tom Cruise.

"Jack Reacher" is kind of a trashy movie with A-list stars and production values. It ain't any great shakes, but for what it is, it does it effectively.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "Get Low"

"I built myself a jail and put myself in it for 40 years," is how renowned hermit Felix Bush describes his self-imposed exile. Now grown old and feeling Death's hand tightening its grip, he wants one last furlough so he can throw himself a huge funeral, with himself as the (living) guest of honor, before it's time to "get low."

In olden days -- or at least the cinematic reflection of them -- every town had someone like Bush: He's far more spoken about than spoken to, with dark stories of his deeds building upon each other, one generation to the next.

We'd call them outcasts, except hermits like Bush have removed themselves from society voluntarily. Absent any concrete reason for shunning them, people create their own, until the truth is buried under a slow avalanche of whispers.

Robert Duvall got his start in movies nearly a half-century ago playing one such recluse, Boo Radley in "To Kill a Mockingbird," and "Get Low" completes the circle.

Imagine if Jem and Scout had never met Boo, but grown up continuing to feed his mystery, and bequeathed their fears and questions to their own children: The result would be Felix Bush.

Stories about him abound: That he's secretly rich, or that he once killed several men with just his fists. One day in the 1920s Bush hitches up his mule and wagon and rides into town, and the folks of Caleb County act as if Ichabod Crane has come to call. He's a ghost, and a legend. People have grown so comfortable with the mythology surrounding Bush, they have no idea what to do when the actual man presents himself.

But Bush has business to conduct: He wants to arrange his own funeral, where people can come together to share their stories about him. Finding no satisfaction with the local reverend (Gerald McRaney), he turns to the local funeral home, owned by recent transplant Frank Quinn.

Quinn, deliciously played by Bill Murray, is disturbed by his clientele's reluctance to avail themselves of his services: Business is slow. "One thing about Chicago, people knew how to die -- shot, drowned, run over ... whatever it took."

Quinn is at first put off by Bush's unusual request to attend his own funeral, but is something of a flimflam man and desperately wants the business. "Ooooo ... hermit money," he chants as they first drive up to Bush's remote shack.

But his young protégé, Buddy (a solid Lucas Black), has qualms. As he gets to know Bush, his fears settle into something like sympathy for the ornery old coot. He grows especially worried when Bush announces that he will raffle off his prime 300 acres, and cash starts deluging the funeral home. "Money makes people do funny things," Buddy says, and we can feel him inwardly turn toward Quinn when he says this.

Two other notable characters, wonderfully played by veteran actors, crop up: Mattie (Sissy Spacek), whose history with Bush goes back far enough to pierce his shroud of mystery, and Charlie Jackson (Bill Cobbs), an old preacher who is his only friend and confessor.

Director Aaron Schneider and screenwriters Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell recognize this is an actor-driven film, less about a narrative progression than the richness of individual scenes shared by a handful of interesting characters. I enjoyed the film's bleak look and period authenticity, though its conclusion feels too tidy.

It's the complex, yet grounded performance by Duvall that gives the movie its weight and grit. When he first appears, Bush is nearly monosyllabic and impenetrable, but as he grows used to being around people again, a more layered creature emerges from this shell.

Duvall shows us the man who has reveled in being a hermit and is terrified of letting anyone in, but craves the peace he knows he will only find in the company of others.

There's a great scene at the very beginning where, after being pestered by some local boys, Bush takes down his old "No trespassing" sign and puts up a new one: "No damn trespassing! Beware of mule." The oddity of that threat hides an invitation.

3 stars out of four

Video review: "The Road"

A Man. A Boy. We know they are father and son, because they call each other so, but we never learn their names. They're bedraggled and filthy, their cheeks caved in with dire hunger, as they push their meager possessions in a rusty shopping cart down an ash-strewn road, with the threat or horrendous death around every turn.

That's the bleak yet uplifting world of "The Road," one of 2009's best films -- which almost no one saw because it barely got released in theaters.

It's out on video now, and I urge people to give this spare, understated near-masterpiece a chance.

Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smith-McPhee star as the pair struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Taking a cue from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, director John Hillcoat ("The Proposition") underplays the performances and the dialogue. Screenwriter Joe Penhall lets the emotional drama assert itself without superfluous embellishment.

We're not even sure what turned the world into such a forbidding expanse of death and decay. Nuclear war seems likely. It's not even clear where the man and boy are heading, other than trying to escape winter's grasp and endure another day.

They meet other humans, but most of the time it's not a welcome occasion. With nothing able to grow, much of mankind has resorted to cannibalism for food. It's a zero-sum game whose only conclusion is humanity's extinction.

But among all this crushing bleakness, there is joy and tenderness that is exhilarating.

Robert Duvall and Charlize Theron have brief but powerful roles as, respectively, an ancient man they meet along the road and the wife and mother who deserted them, giving up all hope and abandoning them to her despair.

Extras are the same for both Blu-ray and DVD versions.

There is a making-of documentary and several deleted scenes, as well as a feature-length commentary track by Hillcoat.

I'm actually rather perturbed at how "The Road" was received. Its release was delayed for about a year, perhaps because in the then-new economic devastation, the studio rationalized that audiences wouldn't greet such a downbeat film with much enthusiasm.

Prove them wrong.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Reeling Backward: "Tender Mercies"

With the release today of "Crazy Heart," it got me to thinking about the 1983 classic "Tender Mercies," starring Robert Duvall in a film with very similar themes. Duvall plays Mac Sledge, a once-legendary country singer who has disappeared off the face of the globe in a trail of booze and debauchery.

Mac and Jeffrey Bridges' Bad Blake from "Crazy Heart" both were once big-time stars, but are now out in the music business wilderness. Well, Blake at least was still playing in bowling alleys and two-bit honkey-tonks. When we first meet Mac, he's coming off a bender at a tiny Texas motel/gas station. He apparently was traveling with a friend who left him high and dry, with just his old trailer to call his own.

I loved the plain language of the Horton Foote screenplay. Mac simply goes to the woman running the motel and says, "Lady, I'm broke. I'll be happy to work off what I owe you." The woman is Rosa Lee, a young Vietnam war widow with a small son, and she will become Mac's salvation.

Foote -- who gave Duvall his start in movies by pushing for him to be cast as Boo Radley in "To Kill a Mockingbird" 20 years earlier -- won an Academy Award for best original screenplay, to go with the gold statuette Duvall took home for Best Actor.

The time compression of the first 15 minutes or so of the film is amazing. In just a few quick edits, director Bruce Beresford lets us know that Mac stayed on as a hired hand, fell in love with Rosa Lee, gave up drinking, married Rosa Lee and bonded with Sonny, her boy. And yet this quick transition doesn't seem hurried or arbitrary.

Mac used to be one-half of country music royalty with his ex-wife Dixie Scott (Betty Buckley), whom he once tried to kill during one of his alcoholic binges. At one point Mac goes to see her perform in nearby Austin -- he wrote most of her songs himself -- and they have a short but bitter exchange in which she warns him not to attempt to see their daughter, Sue Anne (Ellen Barkin, age 29 and playing 18).

Mac gives a new song he has written to Dixie's manager, played by Wilford Brimley, but he returns it to him a few days later, saying it's no good because the country music game has changed. Mac is so enraged, he drives off in a huff, intending to get drunk, but he pours out the bottle he bought and returns to Rosa Lee.

A newspaper reporter turns up to write a story about Mac, but he refuses to answer questions. The story comes out anyway, mostly Dixie's tales of his terrible treatment of her, which generates some notoriety in the sleepy little town. The film's critical exchange comes when Mac is coming out of a feed store, and a woman asks him, "Were you really Mac Sledge?" He says, "Yes ma'am, I guess I was."

A young band turns up on Mac's doorstep looking for inspiration, and he eventually agrees to record the song he wrote for Dixie with them. Just when the record comes out and Rosa Lee tunes the song on the truck radio, Mac reaches his hand in and snaps it off. He has just received word that his daughter, who ran off with a much older man, has died in an accident.

This leads to perhaps the most important scene in the movie, with Mac tending a small garden he has planted across the street from the motel. Beresford shoots naturalistically, almost documentary style, in long shot with a long take with no cuts or close-ups. You can't even see Duvall's face underneath his wide-brimmed hat in the slanting sun. But the pain and power of the scene just spill out over that spare Texas landscape. "I don't trust happiness; never have, never will," Mac confesses.

Like Bridges, Duvall did all his own singing for the film, and even wrote two songs. When I first heard him, I told myself that couldn't be Duvall -- it sounded exactly like an old-school country singer, with a deep, baleful tone. Duvall reportedly spent weeks driving around Texas, listening to accents and small-town bands to get his sound just right.

I have to say that after seeing "Tender Mercies," "Crazy Heart" diminishes just a little bit in my eyes. Many of the themes of redemption and regret seem clearly inspired by the earlier film.

3.5 stars