Legend Of Bagger Vance
(PG, 126 minutes)
UNLESS seeing Will Smith swap hyperactive for mysterious in a docile Robert Redford movie is your particular golf bag, you will wonder why this languid golfing lesson in life qualifies Bagger Vance for legendary status anyway.
Stripped of his trademark moves and quips, Smith, right, turns all mystical and Morgan Freeman-meaningful as Bagger Vance, a caddie who emerges from the Savannah darkness to resurrect the life and game of former amateur golfing boy wonder Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon), whose nerve and swing were lost amid the traumas of the First World War.
Amid the Great Depression, local hero Junuh has been coerced out of drunken, broken, gambling decline into taking on golfing giants Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen in a matchplay challenge arranged by swell Savannah belle Adele (the statuesque Charlize Theron), whose love for Junuh has gone the way of his golf swing.
Bagger Vance, an angel in old golf clothing, takes him under his wing, to carry his clubs, impart other-worldly wisdom and then disappear as suddenly as he came. This presumably represents mystery, and no one looks more puzzled than Smith. Like Bagger, Will Smith leaves no trace, his performance mere footprints in the sea.
Damon's thankless task, like Brad Pitt before him in 1992's A River Runs Through It, is to replicate a younger Robert Redford, too-smug smile and all. Director Redford, meanwhile, ambles through painting pretty scenes and should be fined for slow play.
The Legend Of Bagger Vance is cold where is should be heart-warming. It ain't got that swing, so it ain't worth a thing.
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