What could be pretty about a white funeral service owner, Jerry O’Keefe, in financial straits and played by an aging, craggy Tommy Lee Jones? The Burial is just such a lovely little trial-based Southern drama that displays his natural heroism fighting a big corporation wanting to bury his business for its own enhancement. It’s based on a true story with echoes in his attorney, Willie Gary (Jamie Foxx), of the O J Simpson trial’s flamboyant Johnnie Cochran.
The Loewen Company, under the control of titan Ray Loewen (Bill Camp), offers to buy part of Jerry’s business, including the insurance side, but delays signing to let Jerry’s financial decline continue. In addition, the corporation overcharges poor Blacks in its sales.
Enter the outsized ego of Gary, the opposite of Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch, but a good soul with some of the same morality despite his Armani suits and private plane. He and Jerry bond in the proceedings, fighting the brilliant and beautiful Mame Downes (Jurnee Smollett), who represents Loewen.
In a real incident in Hinds County, Mississippi, in 1995, writer
director Maggie Betts and co-writer Doug Wright have crafted the drama to keep an even balance between the gladiators. Although most of the audience knows the result, The Burial is good enough to make us care to see the little guy squash the giant. In the meantime, many can marvel that justice was served at all within our lifetime.
During the proceedings, Foxx goes effectively over the top more like a Baptist minister proclaiming on a Sunday than a modest attorney trying not to break his record of 12 straight victories over the big boys. The South comes off as racist with a cudgel to beat impoverished victims to support Loewen’s 25-million-dollar yacht, one of the damning facts that eventually crushes his corporation.
The Burial is boilerplate courtroom drama satisfying in every way that solid cinema can deliver. Enjoy an evening of straight up entertainment. O Prime.
The Burial
Director: Maggie Betts (Novitiate)
Screenplay: Betts, Doug Wright (Quilts)
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones (No Country for Old Men), Jamie Foxx (Day Shift)
Run Time: 2h 6m
Rating: R
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
