The Legend of Bagger Vance: Movie Review, DVD Review (1999)

Directed by Robert Redford, written by Jeremy Leven, based on the novel by Steven Pressfield, 127 minutes, rated PG-13.

(Originally published 1999)

In the opening moments of Robert Redford’s new film, “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” audiences are treated to 10 minutes of rapid-fire character development, all of which are meant to shape the film’s main character, Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon), and explain why he lost his golf swing.

As Jack Lemmon narrates, Redford unravels a tissue of softly lit images--athletic Junuh smiling as he wins golf championship after golf championship, handsome Junuh swooning as he falls in love with Adele Invergordon (Charlize Theron), boyish Junuh shaken to the core and ultimately ruined as the result of his enlistment in World War I.

On top of all this, we get women fainting along the glimmering waters of the Atlantic, men committing suicide in the warm light of a setting sun, mass deaths on the battlefield, and then, as the film’s opening moments come to an abrupt close, the cliched soup lines of the Depression.

That most of these images take place in Savannah, Ga.--a city known for the richness of its architecture and the sumptuous beauty of its landscape--punctuates the fact that Redford has moved even farther away from the realism of his best film, 1994’s “Quiz Show,” and pushed deeper into the dreamlike world of the hopelessly romantic.

It’s a shame, really, particularly since “Bagger Vance” is even more removed from reality than “A River Runs Through It” and “The Horse Whisperer,” two films that sent audiences straight into the fuzzy realm of allegory--and far and away from the truths Redford’s films aspire to capture at every contrived turn.

But in spite of its pretentions, “Bagger Vance” captures few truths; it’s drama for dummies. It exists for one reason--to capitalize on the current popularity of golf while also turning a crowd-pleasing metaphor on life. Indeed, just as surely as Junah has lost his golf swing, he’s also lost his way in life.

If this sounds familiar, it might be because Redford, in 1984, starred in Barry Levinson’s “The Natural,” which was about a baseball star who lost his swing and--guess what, folks?--his way in life. Isn’t it fun how Hollywood repackages movies?

What isn’t so fun is how badly those movies can be realized. Shooting his film almost entirely through cheesecloth, Redford hauls in Will Smith as Bagger Vance, a black caddy--not to mention a racial stereotype--who helps Junuh get back into life by recapturing his “authentic swing.” As Bagger sees it, “Inside each and every one of us is our one true, authentic swing. Something we was born with, something that can’t be learned, something that’s got to be remembered.”

What ensues is predictable hokum, a film that ironically doesn’t have one authentic moment in it. Redford follows “The Green Mile” in that he uses a black man as a form of deity to bring its main character, a white man, to personal enlightenment. But unlike “The Green Mile,” he doesn’t go near the prejudices blacks endured during the time his film is set.

Instead, Redford, who must have learned lighting from one of his former co-stars, Barbra Streisand, paints his film in the rosy colors of denial, which robs the film of any depth,. Worse, the film has no surprises, no soul, no performance to pluck it out of tedium. Theron looks the part, but she still can’t act; Damon is all teeth, but he still has no bite; and Smith, who should be embarrassed for agreeing to grin through this bucket of humiliation, offers zilch.

And that, in the end, is what bags “Bagger Vance.”

Grade: D