The first thing you’ll notice about The Burial is the cast. While not packed with big names, the top billing of Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones is excellent. Foxx especially is in top form throughout the film and gets several opportunities to shine through long extended takes, fully inhabiting the personality of Willie Gary. I’m always a sucker for long takes in film, and when Foxx held the spotlight for a good five minutes delivering closing arguments in a courtroom early in the film, I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
Jones is exactly what you would expect from him while playing Jeremiah O’Keefe, an aging funeral home director from Mississippi in financial trouble. He plays the character pretty much one note throughout, but it feels real, exactly how a funeral director would be in every situation. Alan Ruck is chewing scenery as O’Keefe’s longtime lawyer Mike Allred, who brings some Southern “good ole’ boy” prejudice to fuel the conflict himself and Gary. It’s something that is simmers just below the surface of the first half of the film before exploding in spectacular fashion.
The great discovery for me was Jurnee Smollett, facing off against Foxx as Mame Downes, the lawyer hired by the defense. I remembered enjoying her in Birds of Prey a few years back, but don’t recall seeing her in anything else to date. While she is given a tough assignment here, she nails the portrayal as the ruthless young lawyer.
Read my full review on Substack (https://theoscarproject.substack.com/p/review-the-burial).
Review by Jonathan YtrebergBlockedParent2023-10-23T02:39:57Z
The first thing you’ll notice about The Burial is the cast. While not packed with big names, the top billing of Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones is excellent. Foxx especially is in top form throughout the film and gets several opportunities to shine through long extended takes, fully inhabiting the personality of Willie Gary. I’m always a sucker for long takes in film, and when Foxx held the spotlight for a good five minutes delivering closing arguments in a courtroom early in the film, I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
Jones is exactly what you would expect from him while playing Jeremiah O’Keefe, an aging funeral home director from Mississippi in financial trouble. He plays the character pretty much one note throughout, but it feels real, exactly how a funeral director would be in every situation. Alan Ruck is chewing scenery as O’Keefe’s longtime lawyer Mike Allred, who brings some Southern “good ole’ boy” prejudice to fuel the conflict himself and Gary. It’s something that is simmers just below the surface of the first half of the film before exploding in spectacular fashion.
The great discovery for me was Jurnee Smollett, facing off against Foxx as Mame Downes, the lawyer hired by the defense. I remembered enjoying her in Birds of Prey a few years back, but don’t recall seeing her in anything else to date. While she is given a tough assignment here, she nails the portrayal as the ruthless young lawyer.
Read my full review on Substack (https://theoscarproject.substack.com/p/review-the-burial).