Peck's Bad Boys

Rating: 10/10 (19 July 2006)

It's often a mistake to revisit a film that one has enjoyed, admired or even loved in one's youth as so many times a second visit makes you wonder what you ever saw in it first time around and if, in the meantime, a film has achieved cult status the odds against it holding up grow progressively slimmer. What a relief, nay, what a JOY to find that this film has, if anything, grown in stature moving me once again to tears. Having always admired Gregory Peck and been bemused by how underrated he was I was delighted when this magisterial performance was rewarded with an Oscar, one that he could have picked up for Twelve O'Clock High, The Gunfighter, Roman Holiday and post-Mockingbird Captain Newman, MD. Like Jack Lemmon and Alan Ladd - who, it has to be said, was an actor with a limited range - Peck embodied decency so that in many ways Atticus Finch, the father everybody wishes he had and/or SHOULD have had, WAS Gregory Peck in period costume. Like all great films the strength begins with the writing and here a perfect novel that belongs up there with The Great Gatsby becomes a perfect film, transposed from one medium to another with great finesse by Horton Foote. Not since Mickey Rooney learned the major lessons of life at the knee of Judge Hardy in another small town has moral education been so easy to take; it's difficult if not impossible to find anything negative to say about this masterpiece which glitters and gleams from the opening credits and first bars of its haunting theme. Beyond praise.