Get Low (Review)

GET LOW
(7/30/10; Drama, Mystery)
Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray, Lucas Black, Scott Cooper
SCR: Chris Provenzano, C. Gaby Mitchell
DIR: Aaron Schneider
MPAA: PG-13 for some thematic material and brief violent content.
1 hour 40 mins
BOX: $9,156,055

Felix Bush (Duvall) is a notorious hermit who comes into town to order up a funeral party so that he may hear stories about himself. The only problem is that most people loathe the man based on his reputation alone. Those closer to him have a legitimate beef that goes back four decades to an event that looms like a mystery. What happened and how it left its mark on a rural community unfolds slowly – very slowly – as the movie builds to the eventual party.

Get Low is filled with wonderful performances, none more so than Duvall, who commands every scene he’s in with a combination of regret, resolve and curiosity. He’s simply amazing in this role and he deserved an Oscar nomination that never came. Spacek plays a long-ago love interest and she’s lovely in a turn that creates her own dance with Duvall’s character until a mid-point confrontation about what happened. Murray always seems like he’s appearing in his own movie and his apathy and droll comic timing makes the movie seem funnier than it really is.

First time director Schneider was a cinematographer first, which explains why the earthy designs and wide open vistas are so stunning and cinematic. It also explains why the movie loses steam about halfway in. The movie’s tragic flaw is a question posed to Duvall by Spacek. If he had simply answered her, the movie could have ended there. But by holding off on the answer until the bitter end, the finale isn’t nearly as emotional or cathartic as it could be.

Get Low means well but comes off like a Coen Brothers knockoff without the wit or style. Believe it or not, despite a powerful familiarity, Duvall and Spacek have only shared the screen once before, in the lame comedy Four Christmases. (Sony Classics)

— DENNIS WILLIS

Author: Dennis Willis

Dennis Willis is an award-winning producer, TV host, producer, director, editor (he preferred Avid until a torrid affair with Adobe Premiere, and the rest is history), author and film critic (print and radio). Dennis produced and hosted the TV programs Reel Life, FilmTrip, Soundwaves (1983-2008) and produces the annual Soundwaves Xmas program. He is currently the film critic on KGO Radio in San Francisco, and a member of both the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Broadcast Film Critics Association.

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