Tender Mercies **** (1983, Robert Duvall, Tess Harper, Betty Buckley, Wilford Brimley, Ellen Barkin) – Classic Movie Review 5399

Director Bruce Beresford’s rousing 1983 drama swept Robert Duvall to a Best Actor Oscar and Horton Foote to a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award.

Duvall is superb as the alcoholic, once-famous country singer songwriter Mac Sledge, who wakes up one morning to find out that he has got a massive hangover and a debt to match.

Tess Harper also stars as pretty widowed bar owner Rosa Lee who allows Mac to work out his debt and gets him to rebuild his life as her husband with the help of his new young stepson, Sonny (Allan Hubbard).

Beresford’s gentle, minor-key film is an all-round quiet little winner, though it was also quiet at the box-office, despite the Oscars for Duvall and screenplay writer Foote plus three other nominations, including for Best Picture (Philip Hobel), Best Director and Best Original Song for the chief song, ‘Over You’ (by Austin Roberts, Bobby Hart).

Impressively, Duvall wrote and sang all his own songs.

Also in the cast are Betty Buckley, Wilford Brimley, Ellen Barkin, Paul Gleason, Lenny von Dohlen, Michael Crabtree, Norman Bennett and Andrew Scott Hollon.

Duvall also won a Golden Globe for Best Actor, tied with Tom Courtenay for The Dresser (1983).

Foote previously won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and was nominated in the same category for The Trip to Bountiful (1985).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5399

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com