Great direction, passionate style, beautiful photography, but a week story. *** (out of four)

Rating: 7/10 (14 February 2001)

THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE / (2000) *** (out of four)
By Blake French:	Robert Redford almost always brings a gentle style of passion and hope to his movies, and "The Legend of Bagger Vance" is a great example of how he does it. This film's tone, mood, and atmosphere are dreamlike in appearance and the flavor of the film is assuring and inspiring. Many directors would be tempted to fall into the predictable formula of a typical sports movie, but not Redford. He constructs a delicate, refreshing story not just about winning a golf tournament, but about being happy with what you do best. It has subplots involving love, age, death, anger, war, forgiveness, innocence, and eternity, but mostly compares the game of golf with life itself.

"The Legend of Bagger Vance" starts with a brilliant, masterful setup only to slowly run into conflicts in the second act. The story revolves around a somewhat complex character named Rannulph Junuh, played wonderfully by Matt Damon. During the 1910's this individual held the record of greatest amateur golfer in the Southeast, and also the luckiest man when he won the affection of Adele Invergordon (Charlize Theron), the luxurious daughter of the wealthiest man in Savanna Georgia. Now, however, after suffering the horrors of World War II, Junuh is disillusioned, depressed, and only cares about getting drunk and playing poker with his buddies.
Meanwhile, the great depression strikes, Adale's distressed father commits suicide, and she is left with a failed newly opened oceanfront golf resort and a pile of debts. Pressured to sell the property to pay off her many bills, Adale refuses and comes up with an idea to attract attention to the golf course. She nearly puts everything she owns up for a ten thousand dollar exhibition match with two of the world's best golfers. They are Walter Hagen (Bruce McGill), a chubby ladies man, and Bobby Jones (Joel Gretsch), a suave, sophisticated family man. However, the Savanna locals will not allow the tournament unless there are three players participating. Ten-year old Hardy Greaves (J. Michael Moncrief) invites Junuh into the match. While refusal is his first reaction, after meeting a poor black man named Bagger Vance (Will Smith) who offers to be his caddie, Junuh decides to represent Savanna in the tournament.
The plotis sweeping and beautiful up until the second act, where the script becomes desperate and redundant. Junuh begins the tournament on a losing streak, an easy and lazy way of raising the tension level in this kind of movie. Good old Bagger Vance pulls Junuh out of the water, however, and gets his game back to par. Then the movie makes its biggest mistake. It again attempts to increase the amount of tension in the audience by once again making Junuh fall behind. The first time the story exhibits this material we buy into it, but the second we are tired of such contrivances. The movie tries to make up for its mistake by portraying the idea that how the game is won is more important than who wins, but that does not make up for such a major screenplay miscalculation.
The rest of the movie is stirring and avoids the usual clichés. The filmmakers could have sketched Junuh's competing gofers as hard-edged, one-dimensional plot devices to build tension in the story. Junuh's relationship with Adele is not mushy and erotic but realistic and passionate. Robert Redford put considerable effort into taking each plot point only so far. The only variable limitless here is the grand photography by Michael Ballhaus. He makes the golf course look like an endless pathway to heaven, and recreates the experience all golfers feel as they walk up to the first and last hole during a perfect summer afternoon.

"The Legend of Bagger Vance" is not a great movie because of its often week plot, but the movie is so magnificently directed, photographed, and acted that it is able to go beyond the boundaries of an undeserving script and still manage to succeed. I recommend the film, but think with a better story, "The Legend of Bagger Vance" could have been one of the year's most poignant and tactful films.