Solid acting nearly saves this arrogant mess

Rating: 5/10 (5 January 2009)

With so much young talent at his disposal, why does Robert Redford continue to direct movies? His style is wearisome. You leave the movie physically tired because the director makes you squint through too much low-key lighting, pushes you around by jumping from one romanticized (sweeping covers, slow motion, slow-zooming close-ups, etc.) shot to another, and leaves you scratching your head trying to figure out why every scene is paced to take up as much of your time as possible.
Fortunately, the actors save this movie, even if some of their accents are not perfect. For example, Bruce McGill does a fine job of portraying Walter Hagen as a gruff but likable antagonist.
However, this picture bombed for a reason. Nobody (not even a person who plays golf) wants to watch more than half of a too-long movie dedicated to a troubled man "finding" his golf swing. There is simply too much zen-like philosophy and too little treatment of the main character's motivations for this film to elevate itself above the mediocrity of a basic man-versus-personal-demons-overcoming-all-odds story. By now, we have seen it too many times and "Bagger Vance" adds nothing new to this tired theme.