Director: Lasse Hallström, Ger/US, 12A, 107min
Stars: Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez, Morgan Freeman, Damien Lewis, Josh Lucas
On general release
Made two years ago, this is a meandering tale of buried pain and unresolved grief that suggests a craggy Robert Redford wants to be Clint Eastwood. He’s Einar, a flinty Wyoming rancher whose guilt over his drunken past has turned him into a stoic loner. While tending to an injured ranch hand (Freeman), Einar’s Eastwoody masculine isolation is disrupted by the arrival of his estranged daughter-in-law (Lopez), whom he blames for his son’s death, and her daughter.
What follows is a strangely numb exercise in reconciliation and catharsis. The dialogue favours homespun wisdom in terse little bites. Everyone reveals tragic pasts in too many subplots — Lopez’s abusive boyfriend (Lewis) seems only there to absorb a Clint-size thrashing — and all learn their lessons on cue.
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As a director, Hallström has carved himself a niche for Oscar-seeking literary adaptations (The Cider House Rules, Chocolat, The Shipping News) that have steadily descended into polite sentimentality. Here nothing unexpected happens to a relentlessly folksy soundtrack.
Lopez holds her own opposite Redford as he tries his hand at a late-period Eastwood archetype, but he can do only so much with a narrowly conceived role. Freeman has played the wise, forgiving type once too often. The film’s pat emotionalism ensures that we never care for characters too fond of their own misery. And in the end the film’s hammered- home message about the importance of forgiveness comes across like a well- thumbed Hallmark card. Even the bear that mauled Freeman is given a second chance.
IAN JOHNS