Get Low (Blu-ray Review)

20 Feb, 2011 By: Billy Gil

Street 2/22/11
Sony Pictures
Drama
Box Office $9.2 million
$28.95 DVD, $38.96 Blu-ray
Rated ‘PG-13’ for some thematic material and brief violent content.
Stars Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Bull Murray, Lucas Black.

Far from just an actor’s vehicle for Oscar-winner Robert Duvall, Get Low presents an intriguing tale of a curmudgeonly hermit who plans his own living funeral party.

Felix Bush once killed a man with his bare hands — so goes the lore that surrounds this old codger, who has lived in the backwoods of Tennessee for more than 40 years, in the early 20th century. But Bush’s secrets are more complicated and painful than that, and he seeks to air them out when he contracts an opportunistic mortician (Bill Murray) named Frank Quinn and his trainee, Buddy (Lucas Black), to hold a funeral party for him, so people can tell their stories about Bush while he’s still alive to hear them. Quinn has dollar signs in his eyes when Bush suggests a raffle to give away his vast land once he dies, and Buddy sees a chance to prove himself.

Get Low is by turns comical and slow but delivers an emotional tug when it needs to. Overall, it’s an actors’ show — Duvall is his typically formidable self in the role of Bush, taking him past the cliché of ornery old man and finding the tender heart beating underneath the beard and rifle, and his scenes with Murray at his slimiest are worth the price of admission alone. Sissy Spacek is touching as Bush’s old sweetheart, now a widow whom Quinn may have designs on. But Black is the biggest revelation, stealing the show as the overzealous and goodhearted Buddy.