TORONTO – Considering the explicit gravity of her previous films, “The Burial” is an unexpected detour for filmmaker Maggie Betts. Likely considered a dramatic comedy by most, the MGM release centers on a 1995 lawsuit where a Mississippi small businessman, Jeremiah Joseph O’Keefe (Tommy Lee Jones), took the Loewen Group, a Canadian funerals services company, to court. It was a case that quickly transformed from what was assumed to just be a “he said, he said” contract dispute into a revelation of true corporate greed. Thankfully, the film has Jamie Foxx on the bench in a truly funny and passionate turn as legendary lawyer Willie E. Gary.
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As the movie opens, Betts gives a sermon at a church with his wife Gloria (Amanda Warren) in the audience. It soon transitions to a Florida courtroom where Gary channels that same charismatic preaching to demonstrate why he is the king of personal injury lawyers in the state. In an extended one-shot take, we witness him rip his own client time and time again, before dramatically putting the onus on the semi-truck that hit him (oh, and its parent company too). Why? Because his client may have been drunk, but he also had a green light.
A few states away in Mississippi, O’Keefe is under financial pressure from the state regarding his funeral home and funeral home insurance business. His longtime friend and lawyer, “good ol’ boy” Mike Allred (Alan Ruck), suggests he speak with the Loewen corporation which is looking to buy up as many funeral homes as they can in the United States. After traveling to Vancouver, O’Keefe, Allred, and Hal Dockins (Mamoudou Athie), also a lawyer, meet up with gaudy Loewen CEO and founder, Ray Loewen (Bill Camp). Following some quick and seemingly easy negotiations, O’Keefe and his team head back to the U.S. believing they have a deal to sell three of his funeral homes. A sale that should solve the 75-year-old O’Keefe’s financial issues and leave the rest of his funeral home business intact to hand down to his 13 children and their offspring.
But then, Loewen begins to stall. They avoid signing their end of the agreement and it becomes clear that Ray Loewen is hoping O’Keefe will be forced to declare bankruptcy. A resolution that would allow the Loewen company to acquire all of O’Keefe’s eight funeral homes for pennies on the dollar. Against Allred’s advice, O’Keefe files a lawsuit against the big bad Canadian entity. Knowing the case will be tried in a predominantly black county, Dockins has an inspiration and brings O’Keefe to see Gary in action.
After politely listening to the duo’s case, Gary isn’t interested. He may be the self-proclaimed “Giant Killer” but this is small potatoes for him financially. He’s a man who’s been on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” He has a plane named “Wings of Justice” and hasn’t lost a case in 12 years. Why would he tempt fate with a contract law case, one specifically outside his field of expertise? When Dockins pitches him that a win could put him on a national playing field with lawyers like Johnnie Cochran (in the middle of the O.J. trial at the time), he reconsiders.
When Ray Lowen realizes O’Keefe has recruited a charismatic black attorney for what will be a predominately black jury, he counters by hiring his own black lawyer, Harvard Law-educated litigator Mame Downes (Jurnee Smollett) as well as four other powerhouse African-American attorneys. A showdown is set.
Adapted from Jonathan Harr’s 1999 New Yorker article of the same title, the screenplay is co-written by Betts and Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright Doug Wright with very mixed results. When Gary and Allred are facing off in the same room, sparks (and laughs) fly. And a tete-a-tete-a-tete in a hotel lobby between Gary and Downes is an entertaining mutual shakedown that wonderfully avoids any romantic overtones. But outside of one instance of testimony, and Foxx’s best efforts, the courtroom scenes are a bit of a bore. And perhaps it’s casting, perhaps it’s the circumstances, but it’s also hard to have sympathy for Jones’ portrayal of O’Keefe. Because when all is said and done, he’ll still be O.K. The only thing that ever feels like it’s really on the line is Gary’s track record and whether Loewen will get what’s coming to them.
We won’t give away what Gary and Dockins discover to bring down the bad guys, but it changes the tone of the film in a manner that’s slightly jarring from the events preceding it. That’s compounded by the fact that in the latter third of the movie, Betts wants to tie Gary’s childhood days working in Florida’s sugar cane fields to the unmarked graves of plantation slaves, and the funeral home case altogether. It’s an admirable concept, but feels like Betts is thematically stretching the material too thin. It just feels like a different movie. And while It’s a film we’d be down to experience, it’s not this one. [C+]
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