October 16, 2023 · Watch the trailer
Movies aren’t quite pandemic level bad yet, but it’s sure starting to feel that way.
When theaters closed in 2020, studios started heading for the hills and pulling all of their best films to release the lowest quality movies they had in their arsenal just to put something out in the marketplace without caring what the quality or consequences would be.
Although the end of the writers’ strike does allow for project development to continue, an ongoing actors’ strike has also tremendously burdened Hollywood to where films can no longer be in production and movies that were supposed to be released this fall were delayed or pulled because stars are not able to promote them as they normally would.
As a result, audiences are left with fewer, lower quality options at the cinema or at home than they normally would have heading into awards season and a Taylor Swift concert movie is propping up what would otherwise be a disaster at the October box office.
In another year, a film led by Oscar winners like Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones would normally have had a much warmer reception from audiences than has been the case with director Maggie Betts’ dramedy “The Burial,” which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September before being unceremonially dropped on Amazon Prime this past weekend with almost no buzz at all.
The lack of marketing seems to be justified as “The Burial” is an aggressively mediocre, languishing film based on the true story of a funeral home director in the 1980s whose businesses are being threatened by a larger Canadian conglomerate. He teams with a charismatic African American personal injury lawyer to take on big business in the Deep South.
For what it’s worth, Foxx is actually quite good as Willie Gary, the hotshot “ambulance chasing” lawyer who steps up to the big leagues of corporate litigation. Foxx expertly fuses a mix of Johnnie Cochran meets revival preacher with a honest sincerity that the film’s middling screenplay doesn’t really deserve.
As in most of his performances, Foxx is magnetic and his charisma shines off the screen while scenes he isn’t drag considerably to an almost borderline unwatchable level.
Conversely, Jones leans so heavily on his traditional deadpan, almost monotone line affectation that his performance is droll and boring, really highlighting the lack of chemistry with Foxx and making a tale that should be unlikely partners coming together to right a wrong feel less like the charming Oscar winner “Green Book” than this story deserves.
Part of the issue – whether it lays at the feet of Betts behind the camera or the script itself – is that “The Burial” can’t find consistency in tone and the courtroom scenes need to be much more entertaining or engaging to make the two-hour runtime worth it for audiences, but the payoff just isn’t there in the end and it makes one wonder what the point of making the film in the first place was.
Amazon needs to find a bigger, more successful film in a hurry as their partnership with MGM has been largely a bust aside from their acquisition of the James Bond franchise, which is stagnant for a considerable time while a quest for a new lead to take the 007 mantle is underway.
While making and releasing mediocre films like “The Burial” does provide ongoing content for them, Amazon’s lackluster movie slate barely is worth the time for even casual cinephiles to watch in the background at home.
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