Amazon.com video review:
Sometimes everything comes together in a movie and it becomes
something so much greater than the sum of its parts that it can only
be described as a miracle. That's the case with Tender Mercies,
a quietly luminous character piece about an alcoholic, washed-up
country singer named Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall in an Oscar-winning
performance) who hits bottom in a motel room one night and then slowly
finds his way back into the land of the living with the help of the
widow (Tess Harper) and her young son. It's a low-key, contemplative
film that feels like a rural American family comedy in the vein of the
great Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu. Tender Mercies was
directed by Australian Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss
Daisy, Breaker
Morant), written by Horton Foote (To Kill a
Mockingbird), who won an Oscar for his screenplay, and has an
unbeatable cast. This is one of Duvall's most intimate and deeply
personal performances, matched only by his debut 14 years later as
actor-writer-director in The
Apostle. --Jim Emerson
