I must say it’s wild for me just how much streaming has changed the movie business and how we see what we see. While there is so much noise about concert films making a big splash again and how we all await another three-hour epic from an older great filmmaker, we’re mostly inundated with big IP tentpoles that people do go see – sometimes. Or maybe a very smartly small-budgeted horror film that also might be an IP driven from a franchise out of the ’70s, ’80s, or ’90s. Not too long ago, a movie with a couple of known star actors in a story with good performances could get people into the theater and make so good money. They might get an awards campaign without being marketed openly or subtly as Oscar Bait. I bring all this up because I got to watch The Burial, a film from the storied studio of MGM, now owned by Amazon, debuted on its streaming platform Prime Video. The film stars Jamie Foxx as Willie E. Gary and Tommy Lee Jones as Jeremiah O’Keefe, based on a true story of Gary as the lawyer of O’Keefe in a courtroom fight against Loewen Funeral Company in the ’90s.
A well-made courtroom drama with likable actors was just as much of a bread-and-butter successful movie as a legal show is on TV, but now it’s just a streaming fare, and that makes me sad. In The Burial Foxx, he gives just a good, charismatic, and fun performance he did earlier this They Cloned Tyrone in this film. He plays Gary as such a big personality and showboating lawyer that you won’t be surprised that this film takes place in the time frame it does. At this point, Jones plays what you would expect from him acting-wise – an old man from the south trying to be the best and honorable he can be. And I feel he does a good job here and works well with Foxx on screen, even if Foxx completely outshines him. The two do give the audience a believable relationship between the two as they become friends trying to overcome a beast of an opponent.
A nice surprise is seeing Jurnee Smollett as Mame Downes, the attorney Gary must face in the courtroom. She plays Downes as a confident and hard-nosed-styled lawyer who is not shaken by Gary’s charisma and attention-grabbing tactics in the room. The two actors, Foxx and Smollett, are very good together on screen. They were able to pull off competitive rivalry like that you’d see in a prize fight or NBA game. Dorian Missick, who plays Reggie Douglas – Gary’s right hand, is very enjoyable as comic relief as essentially a hype man for Gary through most of the film. Alan Ruck, who I’ll always see as Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, plays Mike Allred, O’Keffe’s good old boy lawyer who he feels can’t help beat this huge corporation.
The film takes a court case and slowly builds it from some odd couple-like setup into a film about corporations and their dehumanization of people for dollars and how that affects the Black community. It’s something that I would’ve liked to see explored a bit more, yet also that maybe should’ve been a different film altogether with it not focusing on the two leads that it does but other characters personified by Hal Dockins played by Mamoudou Athie, another lawyer who essentially sets up the story here to get O’Keefe to get Gary to take on this case to win. While The Burial is very enjoyable, and I wish it had been a theatrical release, this is one of the best Prime video releases I’ve seen this year.
Score: B+
