Review ©1998 eric lurio
The Apostle
Directed by Robert Duvall
You can't really do one man shows in the cinema. Oh, people have tried, but on the whole it doesn't really work. so Robert Duvall doesn't bother in his latest opus. It's close, though.
Duvall is The Reverend Euliss `Sonny' Dewey, a televangelist from Texas, who spends so much time on the job that he neglects his wife Jessie(Farrah Fawcett) and children. Jessie retaliates by having an affair with another preacher named Horace(Todd Allen), for whom she grabs control of the ministry.
Upset at this turn of events, Sonny gets drunk and bashes Horace's head in with a baseball bat before fleeing.
Justly wanted for murder, Sonny goes to Louisiana, where he takes the identity of The Apostle E.F. and begins his ministry anew.
Along the way he meets a fellow who send him to Brother Blackwell(John Beasley), a retired minister who owns a derelict church which is restored by Sonny and where he starts his new ministry.
While there is a failed romance with Miranda Richardson, who plays the receptionist at a local radio station, everyone else is just a prop for Duval to spout religion at and do his Billy Sol Hargus routine for.
He's good at it, too. But the flaw(if you can call it that) here is the same as Scorcese's `Kundun,' unless you go in for that sort of thing, what's the point? It barely works as a character study.
This is great performance, but alas, not a great movie.
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