For a kid from the posh suburb of Shaker Heights, Ohio Paul Newman has a remarkable affinity for playing blue collar men. This is a guy who knows the
value of hard work and it's his greatest disappointment in life is that he hasn't
passed on that value to his children, Katherine Borowitz and Robby Benson.
It's Benson who Newman worries the most about. He wants to be a writer, but
that just doesn't happen over night. One has to get out into the world and
acquire a little life experience to learn what one wants to write about. The
only one that didn't apply to was Emily Dickinson. Benson cites Hemingway
as getting rejected 300 times before getting some money for his thoughts.
But there certainly was a man who had himself a lot of life experience and
earned a few dollars to pay his own way.
I could understand Newman very well since I came from a family of uncles just
like Newman on my mother's side. I could understand Benson less so since all
he wants is surf and sex. He tries working at some dead end jobs, his scenes
with Morgan Freeman at a cardboard box factory and trying to repossess Ossie
Davis's car are his best in the film.
In fact Newman's tragedy is that health issues cause him to stop working and he won't acknowledge them.
But it's Newman and Benson that's the heart of Harry&Son. Father and son
Keach come to a kind of understanding toward the end. The film is not the
best from either Newman or Benson, but nothing to be ashamed of here.
