A Family Thing

I like Robert Duvall. He has made some great films over the years - A Civil Action, The Apostle, Tender Mercies, The Great Santini, Apocalypse Now and the Godfather, to name a few. Even his small films are great, like Assassination Tango.

This film, co-written by Billy Bob Thornton, is a gem that shines in a sea of excellence. The discovery that his real mother was black, was a shock to Earl Pilcher Jr. (Duvall), and he heads off from Arkansas to Chicago to find his brother Ray, played by James Earl Jones, another great actor known by most people as Darth Vader.

Ray already knows everything and is not anxious to revive old memories. The interaction between the two is mesmerizing and funny. It is what movies are all about.

Irma P. Hall (The Ladykillers, A Lesson Before Dying) is captivating as Aunt T. and has some of the best lines in the film. It is worth your time just to see her.

What a memorable experience!

What a pleasant surprise this was. I caught this one day on Showtime and really didn't give it much of a chance. But I was so wrong!! Powerful performance by Irma P. Hall (as Aunt T.), and Robert Duvall is at his best as well. Wonderfully acted and written, this has to be the best movie I have seen in a long while. Sure, the same old southern stereotypes are portrayed as well as the same for the inner-city black culture, with many being quite accurate. Some parts were a little over the top, like the birthday party in the bar that Earl crashes as a total stranger. But that being said, not a lot of negatives I can say about this movie.

You know the Oscar's are warped when movies like this aren't even nominated for an award. This is a really great movie, extremely well acted, perfectly cast, and wonderfully directed. An unusual story that will bring you to tears and reshape your heart. What a blessing to discover and enjoy! Thank you for making it. 7.4/10.

Any movie about racial matters is bound to be difficult to tackle by anyone with scruples and integrity. For those who can deftly deal with the issue and make a quality movie: my hat's off to them. "A Family Thing" is a quality movie.

Earl Pilcher, Jr. (Robert Duvall), an old white Arkansan finds out that his real mother was not the old white woman who raised him and who just passed away, but a Black woman his father had an illicit relationship with. This news rocked his genteel Southern world. He grew up a proud white Southern man who referred to Blacks as N-words. Now he has to confront the fact that A.) his father was a philanderer and B.) he was half Black. He now wanted to find his real brother, Ray Murdock (James Earl Jones), thereby fulfilling his adopted mother's wish and satisfying his own curiosity

It wasn't a felicitous reunion between the two of them. There was some serious bitterness: Earl because he had to face the fact he wasn't white (or at least all white) and Ray because he saw Earl's father as the cause of his mother's death.

This was a well written and finely acted drama. Billy Bob Thornton's first screenplay, "One False Move," was a good debut. "A Family Thing" is even better.

A moving portrayal of the problems of racism - from both sides. The central characters a portrayed with incredible depth. Aunt T (Irma P. Hall) sums up the futility of racism - the films central theme - with the line "being blind does not give me the opportunity to judge a person by their color" (paraphrased). That being said, the film gets it's message across without preaching. An excellent film.