All right, court case films. Coming fresh out of reviewing Miranda’s Victims, I definitely had to prepare my attention span for more of these. As I’ve mentioned before, while many in this genre often turn out very educational, and dare I say intriguing, they are still a lot to be willing to take on. Full respect for fans of of this genre who can’t get enough Law and Order or Suits, but I’ve definitely got to be in the mood for this. Ok maybe if it’s based off a true story so I learn something important about a real life law that got put into place, like Miranda’s Victim. Something about a really juicy case I can sink my teeth into. Yeah…unfortunately it looks like I may not be as lucky with The Burial.
The story follows Jeremiah “Jerry” O’Keefe (Tommy Lee Jones) who owned a handful of funeral homes and became forced to sell a percentage of them due to overdue payments to the Mississippi State Insurance Commission. His lawyer, Mike Allred (Alan Ruck), found a buyer in Raymond Loewen (Bill Camp), the multi-millionaire owner of The Loewen Group, where they made a verbal contract. After weeks of silence, Jerry O’Keefe had to make the hard decision to sue Loewen with the help of his lawyer and the young up-and-coming lawyer Hal Dockins (Mamoudou Athie).
After studying the case, it looked like quite a David vs Goliath lawsuit so Hal suggested that they get a new lawyer because he felt that Allred couldn’t win with a black jury. He convinced Jerry to look into a very flashy and dramatic yet immensely successful injury lawyer, Willie Gary (Jamie Foxx). Willie Gary was very reluctant to take the case, but decided to take it on after having a stroked ego. After meeting the Loewyn Groups lawyer, an equally-successful lawyer named Mame Downes (Jurnee Smollett), Gary forced the case to go to trial while seeking $100 million for Jerry.
The Burial was directed by Maggie Betts (Novitiate) and written by the director and the Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Wright (Quills), produced by Jamie Foxx, cinematography by Maryse Alberti (Velvet Goldmine, The Wrestler, Creed) and music by Michael Abels (Get Out, Us, Nope). It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11th 2023 before having a limited theatrical release on October 6th, finally brought to Amazon Prime Video on October 13th 2023.
I’ll reiterate, The Burial is about a civil suit case. Between two white business men. I was struggling extremely hard to summon an ounce of care for any of this at first. Even the poster is atrocious, almost fooling me into thinking it was a comedy at first. But you want to know the real twist of all of this? By the end of this movie I absolutely cared about the results of this, and was practically in tears.
Obviously, the positively behemoth acting chops from the legendary cast of the film had large part in this. If both Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx are in it, it’s hard not to pay attention. Jones has me 100% convinced the elderly Southern gentleman he was portraying was practically a saint. Foxx, similarly made me somehow believe a flashy, arrogant lawyer from the 90’s was somehow a good person. I’ll also give a huge shoutout to Mamoudou Athie who portrayed Hal Dockins. He impressively held his own around Jones and Foxx with a quiet,
dignified strength I would love to see more of from him in the future.
Of course, even a flawless cast can’t completely carry a film. The Burial, despite its somewhat dull sounding premise, manages to get as many beautiful shots in as it could, making it one of the more visually pleasing films of this genre in recent memory. The editing mostly served well to keep my interest, while only jumping ahead a little quickly in the beginning for my liking.
Overall, it’s the sheer amount heart this film has that really won me over. The emotionally compelling writing convinced me that somehow a simple court case involving business owners in the 1990’s was somehow much deeper and more important than it appears to be. And that issues that on the surface level aren’t about race, can very much be about race if you dig a little deeper. I have no regrets watching yet another court case film.
