‘Bagger Vance’ is par for the course

Max Jacobson

Friday, Nov. 3, 2000 | 10:24 a.m.

Grade: ** 1/2

Starring: Will Smith, Matt Damon and Charlize Theron.

Screenplay: Jeremy Leven.

Director: Robert Redford.

Rated: PG-13 for some sexual content.

Running time: 127 minutes.

Playing at: UA Green Valley Cinemas, UA Showcase 8, UA Rainbow Promenade 10, Century Orleans, Century Desert 16, Century Cinedome 12 Henderson, Las Vegas Drive-in, Regal Cinemas Colonnade 14, Regal Cinemas Texas Station 18, Regal Cinemas Village Square 18.

Golf can be a magnificent obsession. Like all great games, through playing it one is able to express one's deepest emotions and fears.

"The Legend of Bagger Vance" is a gentle fable where golf plays a major role, but we all know from the very start that the movie is about much broader subjects. As Bagger Vance (Will Smith) remarks upon meeting Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon), "a man's grip on his club is like his grip on life." That could be true, but what if you aren't a golfer?

A few of these aphorisms go down nice and easy, especially when uttered by someone as likeable as Smith, a tall fellow partially hidden beneath a soft felt hat. But the movie is ultimately bogged down by a barrage of incessant folk wisdom. And eventually, it sinks just a bit into the Georgia silt.

This movie has a lot going for it. The beautiful photography by Michael Ballhaus, a plangent score by Rachel Portman, and capable direction by Robert Redford, (whose performance in "The Natural" touches upon similar themes), is hard to resist. Soft-focus lenses embellish the dreamy Georgia seascape, and the production design by Stuart Craig evokes a bygone era that was the Old South in the '30s.

But this is also a preachy film full of psychobabble, which is familiar turf to director Redford, whose last film was "The Horse Whisperer." In a movie such as "Caddyshack," when Chevy Chase says "be the ball," it's clear that he's joshing. In this film, however, every twitch of Smith's nose is some kind of metaphor for existence.

When the movie begins we see the young Junuh in all his glory. He has captured the heart of Adele Invergordon (the stunning Charlize Theron) and his golf game is in full flower. But then comes the war to end all wars, and it breaks him. Ten years later he returns to Savannah. He has lost his lady and his swing. His life is on complete hold.

It is also the Great Depression, and Savannah needs a golf match to get the economy rolling. Adele has inherited her late father's golf resort. To save it from being subdivided by capitalist wolves, she invites Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen, the two greatest golfers of the day, to play a challenge match.

Amazingly, they accept, and that's when an engaging child named Hardy Greaves (J. Michael Moncrief) joins the fray. He convinces Junuh to play in the match, too, even though he hasn't picked up a club for 10 years. And one night while practicing his swing in the moonlight, the movie's title character appears, to caddy for Junuh, and to help him reclaim his soul.

Most of the rest of the movie is a long golf match, with Damon swinging the clubs, and Smith telling him which clubs to use and why, each time with implications that reach far beyond the game of golf. At one point, Damon is hopelessly trapped in a forest, with an impossible lie. "I can't do this," Junuh says. "Yes, you can," Vance tells him, "it's time to get on with your life."

The film is sprinkled with good performances: an unbilled Jack Lemmon as the aged Hardy Greaves; Bruce McGill as a debonair, cavalier Walter Hagen; Joel Gretsch as the ramrod straight, matinee idol-like Bobby Jones; and Lane Smith as sportswriter Grantland Rice. It's a feelgood movie with a positive Zen-like message, and the same wistful qualities that run through many of Redford's works, "A River Runs Through It" being a recent example.

But there are a few things in this film that deserve to be called flaws. One is the notion that an itinerant black man could have appeared out of nowhere and caddied in a golf resort in Georgia during the Depression, much less for the greatest golf match of the day. Another is the fact that if you don't like or understand golf, chances are that most of this movie will bore you silly.

For those of us who dream of a full set of Big Berthas, however, or that pin high-chip shot to win an imaginary tournament, "The Legend of Bagger Vance" makes its share of birdies, probably about the best one can hope for in life as well as in the movies.