Not Eastwood's best, but nod bad

Rating: 7/10 (24 November 2012)

Your one surviving parent is slowly losing his sight. You have a very difficult relationship and, at the same time, are coming to a turning point in your own career. What do you do tend to, your career or your family?
Gus Lobel (played by Clint Eastwood) is a scout for the Atlanta Braves and has resisted the change occurring in his business and the world around him with every fiber of his being. While his immediate superior and longtime friend Pete (played by John Goodman) values Gus's opinion and defends him against his detractors, one of them is Pete's boss and Gus's ultimate superior. That man, Pete Silver (played by Matthew Lillard) is determined to fire Gus even though he is completely unaware of Gus's failing eyesight. To Silver, a man who relies on statistics and equations over experience and first-hand observation, Gus is a relic of a time gone by. Gus is given one chance, scouting a highly-coveted player in North Carolina, to prove his value to the organization. Pete worries about his friend and so, behind his back, he contacts Gus's daughter Mickey (played by Amy Adams). Mickey is a lawyer on a partnership track in a prestigious firm with a pressing case on the horizon. She's been told that her handling of this case will determine the outcome of the upcoming partnership vote. Still, despite a strained relationship between the two of them, she chooses to go to her father's aide in rural North Carolina and work in her hotel room and over the internet. When Gus informs Mickey that his eyes are starting to fail him, she begins taking an active role in her father's scouting trip. A task she is well-suited for, after a spending a large portion of her formative years by her father's side on scouting trips. In addition to colleagues Gus has known for many years, there is Johnny Flanagan, a relatively inexperienced scout who Gus recruited into the major leagues and who later suffered a career-ending injury. Johnny (played by Justin Timberlake) thinks of Gus as a mentor and, separately, takes an immediate romantic interest in Mickey.
Now, many believed that 2008's Gran Torino would be the end of Eastwood's career, both as a director and an actor. Some who thought little of the film even took great joy in the very idea of Eastwood's retirement. I was not among them. I won't say this is better than Gran Torino or Million Dollar Baby, it isn't. Still, it's an enjoyable film about the endurance of family that also manages to incorporate some timeless wisdom regarding the quintessential American sport. The budding relationship between Mickey and Johnny isn't given as much time, though that's probably for the best.