Robert Duvall plays the ultimate domineering dad in this screen adaptation of a Pat Conroy novel.
I tried to read the novel and got about 10 pages in before deciding that Conroy's pedestrian bestseller style was not for me. The movie is pretty decent, notable mostly for the performances of Duvall and Michael O'Keefe, who plays his oldest son, as well as Blythe Danner as the wife who loves her husband but not everything about him. The film is a little too apologetic on Duvall's behalf, especially in its later moments, suggesting as it does that his terrible behavior is somewhat justified by his loyalty to the armed forces and by extension the country he serves. That message is a bit harder to swallow in the now of today.
Duvall and O'Keefe were both nominated for Oscars, but lost to Robert DeNiro in "Raging Bull" and Timothy Hutton in "Ordinary People." The Academy made the right decision in both cases.
Grade: B+
I tried to read the novel and got about 10 pages in before deciding that Conroy's pedestrian bestseller style was not for me. The movie is pretty decent, notable mostly for the performances of Duvall and Michael O'Keefe, who plays his oldest son, as well as Blythe Danner as the wife who loves her husband but not everything about him. The film is a little too apologetic on Duvall's behalf, especially in its later moments, suggesting as it does that his terrible behavior is somewhat justified by his loyalty to the armed forces and by extension the country he serves. That message is a bit harder to swallow in the now of today.
Duvall and O'Keefe were both nominated for Oscars, but lost to Robert DeNiro in "Raging Bull" and Timothy Hutton in "Ordinary People." The Academy made the right decision in both cases.
Grade: B+