When it comes to movie promotional lines, Robert Redford's slightly supernatural romantic drama The Legend Of Bagger Vance has one of the worst pitches of the year:
"Some things can't be learned. They must be remembered."
Yikes! That makes the movie sound as dreary as a pre-Confederation Canadian history class. The truth is that Bagger Vance is better than that, and complex enough that no ad-man's slogan can dumb it down and sum it up easily.
Big, sprawling and brimming with the milk of human kindness, Bagger Vance is an enjoyable, old-fashioned film.
It is at one with the man who made it. At 64, Redford is in a reflective mode. After making tougher, edgier and more socio-political films such as Ordinary People, The Milagro Beanfield War and Quiz Show, Redford has gone both soft and sweet.
In that sense, Bagger Vance is related more to the elegant A River Runs Through It and the melodramatic The Horse Whisperer than his other work, and it falls between them in quality.
Based on Steven Pressfield's novel and set primarily in the 1930s, with sequences during World War I, Bagger Vance stars the strong trio of Will Smith, Matt Damon and Charlize Theron. Redford, as producer-director, does not appear on screen.
Damon is the central character, a favourite son of Savannah, Ga. In his youth, he is the hottest golfer and most charming rogue in the city. He wins the love of the local tycoon's beautiful daughter, played with a feisty sensuality by Theron.
A war horror sours our hero. He loses his golf swing and maybe his soul. He disappears, reappearing in the Depression.
By this time, Theron's family fortune is exhausted. All she has left is debt and a lavish golf resort. What the Depression cannot strip away is the woman's gumption and ambition.
So, to generate publicity and save her resort, she arranges to stage an historic golf match featuring the two hottest pros in America -- Bobby Jones (Joel Gretsch) and Walter Hagen (Bruce McGill), both of them real-life legends. Damon, with Smith as his caddy-coach, is recruited as the local wildcard.
Smith's character embodies the supernatural aspect of the film. You'll have to decide for yourself exactly what kind of spectre he represents. What Smith does do is play the character with an engaging low-key sense of reality that makes him as warm and fuzzy as a teddy bear. He is also amusing.
Damon is good and boasts one great scene. Theron is sassy-sensational as a Thirties gal. McGill and Gretsch are both excellent in support and youngster J. Michael Moncrief plays the obligatory boy who serves as our entry into the story.
Only Jack Lemmon plays into the sand trap. He appears in the movie's unfortunate and misguided contemporary bookends. This hoary storytelling technique is as embarrassing here as it was in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.
But the rest of the movie works its magic. And you don't need to play golf to appreciate it, any more than A River Runs Through It appealed only to fly fishermen.
A legend it is not. A good, adult-oriented experience it is.
(This film is rated PG)
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