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.
