Amber Waves

Who would have thought that a TV movie about wheat-whackers would be this good? (See other reviews for detailed description.) Dennis Weaver, Kurt Russell, and Mare Winningham are uniformly excellent in their roles in a dramatic (but never melodramatic) script by veteran television series writer Ken Trevey ("Gunsmoke," "The Big Valley," "Lou Grant," et al.). It might sound like a snooze-fest, but you won't regret watching this one.

Amber Waves is a rarely-seen TV movie about wheat harvesters in the American midwest. As an Englishman, I found much of the film interesting purely because it is about a way of life totally unfamiliar to me. The landscapes are very nicely photographed, and the leading performances from Dennis Weaver and Kurt Russell are pretty engaging.

The story is about a grizzled old harvester named Bud Burkhardt (Weaver) who learns that he is dying from lung cancer. His attitudes to life are simple: work hard, be reliable and fight for your corner when you have to. However, he finds himself in a peculiar position, since he needs an operation desperately if he is to have any hope of survival, yet he doesn't have the time to be recuperating on a hospital bed when there's a harvest to be gathered. Should he put his life first, or his responsibility to deliver the crop? He hires an extra harvester in the shape of a young, failed magazine model (Russell) who initially hates hard labour, but soon comes to realise that the responsibility and drive of honest hard work is good for the soul.

There's nothing remarkable about the plot, which has elements of disease-of-the-week cliches and lots of long, loving sequences showing men driving around fields in combine harvesters. However, the engaging performances and the lovely photgraphy keep you interested. The film isn't as moving as I thought it might be (given the potentially tear-jerking storyline). There's one moving scene where Weaver phones his long estranged son and begs him to come home, but other than that the opportunities for powerful emotional scenes are generally missed.

On the whole, Amber Waves is a run-of-the-mill TV movie which has some nice touches and agreeable, interesting moments but doesn't quite hit the emotional level that it seems to be aiming for.

I have looked for this movie on TV, satellite, and rental. It has not been shown in our area in over six years. I would like to see it released or at least shown on TV so I can copy it. It's a very good family/romance type movie. That also deals honestly with life, love, growing up, facing responsibilities and the hardship of farming during wheat harvest.

Everything about this movie is "classic," as far as custom combining movies go. About the only thing wrong with it is maybe too much licentiousness. Weaver and the others do excellent acting. Custom combining is an American tradition since World War II. In the late '70s and early '80s, there were a lot of combining crews, as combines were getting bigger and more comfortable to operate, yet they weren't as modern as today's combines. And a lot of those combines were Canadian-built Massey-Ferguson 760s. This was an ABC TV movie. It was filmed in Canada, though the movie is supposed to occur in the U.S.A. Weaver's character almost kills himself and loses a combine, but the harvest must go on.

Kurt Russell is a womanizing, irresponsible male model who is both full of himself and improbably on a shoot in the wheat fields of the Midwest, while aging Dennis Weaver works nearby with the barely profitable wheat harvesting company that he owns. Each man is having the worst day of his life, as Kurt is beaten up in a bar then fired for his now un-photographable looks and he ends up headed back to NYC with no money to get there. Meanwhile, Weaver's credit is caput at his bank, he can't find a buyer for his troubled firm and his doctor has just told him he has terminal cancer. Weaver picks up a young hitch-hiker, who happens to be Russell and when Weaver drops him off in the city the cops pounce on the young man for hitch-hiking and vagrancy, which will no doubt net him a term on a chain gang.

Weaver bails out the young model and at first his motive appears to be altruism, but his agenda becomes clear when he announces he's short of labor and that he's shanghaiing Russel to be a part of his crew. A duck out of water at first, the arrogant young pretty-boy/model gradually toughens up physically and even begins to develop character, thanks to the hard work and the good example set by straight-arrow Weaver. Against all odds Russell turns into a valuable member of the crew. Enter Weaver's daughter, played by Mare Winningham, who ends up falling for Russell, who discovers a noble streak he never knew he had, as he tells Winningham to save her love for "somebody who deserves it." This is a simple, beautiful film that puts to shame the noisy, head-rattling and cartoon-ish drivel that graces our movie theaters these days. The fine script features realistic parts for Weaver, Russell, Winningham and Wilford Brimley, who deliver uniformly fine performances. After watching this you will feel you've experienced a part of America you've probably never seen and gotten to know some people who speak and act straight from the heart.