There aren’t many movies that advertise themselves as treatises on masculine love. Look hard, however, and you can find them. Try as it might, “Secondhand Lions” (2003) isn’t one of those wistful, sepia-toned, “written and directed by” pieces of sugar candy that help one pass a lazy Sunday afternoon. It isn’t simply two feral geezers and an abandoned kid trying to figure each other out in rural 1960s Somewhere. It helps that Michael Caine, Robert Duvall and Haley Joel Osment are the principals, but underneath the tall-tale bluster, there’s a heart to this film, and it’s shared by those three.
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Richard Harris does so much static bloviating in “Wrestling Ernest Hemingway” (1993), I checked to see if it was based on a play. Alas, Steve Conrad had adapted his own short story. It’s an opposites-attract film in which Harris’ drunken Irish ancient mariner finds a friend in an introverted, retired Cuban barber played by Robert Duvall (Sandra Bullock and Shirley MacLaine provide support). Yes, Duvall plays an old Cuban man while Harris basically plays himself and yet somehow Duvall is more believable. While Harris chews the scenery, Duvall’s mannered nibbling makes you wish the film had been more about him.
Let’s say you’re wondering what “Ordinary People” would be like if it took place on a farm in Montana instead of some WASP enclave in Connecticut (let’s just say, because we know you’re not). Well, your pretend prayers have been answered with “The Stone Boy” (1984). Brother dies accidentally, other brother feels survivor guilt, everybody else goes batshit crazy. Except grandpa (Wilford Brimley). He’s so even-keeled, he could look death in the face and sell it a reverse mortgage. Anyway, it’s an interesting film in that it portrays an adolescent with PTSD before we knew what those letters stood for.
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