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Friday, September 9, 2005
Superb cast elevates low-key 'Unfinished Life'
Like most superstars whose appeal has been largely tied to their looks, Robert Redford has struggled to find suitable roles as he's aged, and there has been a slightly pathetic, hang-on-to-youth quality to many of his performances since reaching 60, including last year's "The Clearing."
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View all photosBut in "An Unfinished Life," he lets it all go in the kind of grizzled, grandfather character that Clint Eastwood has been embracing for years. It's his most convincing and appealing performance since "The Horse Whisperer," only slightly marred by movie-star nonsense.
He plays Einar Gilkyson, a Wyoming rancher whose life has gone to hell since the death of his beloved son years before in a traffic accident and who now lives in emotional seclusion on the crumbling ranch with his handicapped foreman (Morgan Freeman).
Things change when his estranged daughter-in-law (Jennifer Lopez), who was driving the car that killed his son, returns to the ranch in flight from an abusive boyfriend and in the company of the 11-year-old granddaughter Einar didn't know he had.
As this situation works itself out, there are no big surprises. It's exactly the kind of sincere, small-scale drama that's now anathema in Hollywood, which may explain why -- despite its big names -- it has being dropped into the end-of-summer movie dump after a year on the shelf.
And, to be completely honest, director Lasse Hallstrom fails to make anything distinctly special or genuinely magical out of the situation, and the two scenes in which he has Redford explode into violent, movie-star heroics seem wincingly contrived.
Still, the story basically works, and the film's laid-back, low-key approach is most of its charm. It's pleasantly reminiscent of the kind of down-to-earth regional dramas Redford's Sundance Institute used to sponsor in its '80s heyday.
The cast is excellent. Lopez plays her supporting character with a surprising lack of vanity; Freeman is as noble and endearing as ever; and 15-year-old Bellevue-born newcomer Becca Gardner all but steals the movie as the girl struggling to bond with an impossible grandpa.
Redford also deserves a lot of credit. It's not the kind of showcase that's going to earn him an Oscar, but, without too many compromises, he manages to find the soul of a difficult character and makes his emotional odyssey both believable and satisfying.
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