The Legend of Bagger Vance falls into this category. If one goes only by the trailer, it looks like a movie about a golfer. A few might know--or find out--that the book on which it is based is a modern take on the great Hindu epic the Bhagavad Gita, but if they aren't interested in philosophy or oriental religions that will likely mean nothing. As a result, they will pass this lyrical gem of a movie by, and they will be missing an opportunity not only to see some excellent performers at work but to enjoy a story that manages to inspire without preaching and teach without effort.
Matt Damon is Randolph Junuh, a Savannah man who appears to have a brilliant future on the links until he goes off to fight in World War I. His experiences there shatter his spirit, and when he returns to Savannah after a ten-year absence he retreats into anonymity and a bottle.
Comes the Great Depression, and Junuh's former lover Adele Invergordon (Charlize Theron) is stuck with a white elephant of a golf resort and its attendant debts she inherited from her father. Determined to hang on to her father's cherished property, she devises a plan for an exhibition match between golf masters Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen. The Savannah town fathers, however, were hoping to lay hands on her property and refuse to support her project unless the players list has a local boy on it. And the only one with a prayer of competing with the two giants of the sport is--Randolph Junuh.
Told as a flashback by Hardy Greaves, played as an old man by Jack Lemmon and as an eager young golf addict by newcomer J. Michael Moncrief, The Legend of Bagger Vance is more than a story of a broken man being repaired. It is about that man's finding that the true source of healing lies within and is found not by discovery but by "remembering." The catalyst of that realization is, of course, the eponymous Bagger Vance, played with gentle intensity by Will Smith. Nor it there any question that the philosophical caddy is the pivot around which this story of loss and redemption rotates. Smith's taut performance vibrates with controlled intensity, the natural flamboyant humor that is his trademark burning like banked embers. It is this sort of role that goes a long way toward eliminating the taste of some of his more tragic cinematic choices (can you say Wild, Wild West?).
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