THAT EVENING SUN- We won’t hear his name called on March 7, but for my money Hal Holbrook’s performance in this gripping Southern indie is Best Actor Oscar-worthy, and arguably the most moving of his 55-year career.
Holbrook stars as Abner Meecham, a curmudgeonly coot that escapes from the old folks home where his uppity lawyer son Paul (Walton Goggins) has stowed him and heads back to his farm to live out his twilight years. Problem is, when he gets there he finds the family of Lonzo Choat (Ray McKinnon), a good-for-nothing hooligan prone to getting drunk and abusing his wife (Carrie Preston) and daughter (Mia Wasikowska, soon starring as Alice in Tim Burton’s Wonderland).
It appears Paul gave the Choats a lease-to-own option on the property, so the stubborn-as-a-mule Abner lays claim to his old guest house and proceeds to make life miserable for Lonzo, openly degrading his manhood and adopting an incessantly barking dog to drive him mad. "I worked too hard and too long," he reasons. "I ain't goin' down without a fight." This heated rivalry develops into a bitter inter- and intra-family feud: Paul thinks his father is mean and unreasonable, while Lonzo’s daughter Pamela would do just about anything to escape.
Writer-director Scott Teems (a Georgia native) expertly builds the dramatic tension: You’re never quite sure how this war of iron wills will end, but you’ll have a hunch it won’t end well. All the actors, including Barry Corbin as Abner's neighbor/co-conspirator, are excellent at crafting characters that explore the thousand shades of grey dividing good from evil. Abner is old, infirm and dearly missing his departed wife (played by Holbrook’s real-life love, Dixie Carter), but he’s also a devious, ornery cuss who could make a saint swear. Lonzo is lazy, angry and obviously out of control, but he clearly struggles to do right by his wife and child.
This is the sort of low-profile, low-budget film that indie festivals are made for, but it’s also character-based storytelling at its finest, and truly deserves to find a mainstream audience in theaters. – BRET LOVE
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