Saturday, July 01, 2006

Places in the Heart - 1984

This movie takes place in Texas during the depression. The movie opens with Edna Spalding (Sally Field) as the young wife of a town sheriff. He's called out to calm a drunken black boy who's shooting bottles. The boy thinks his gun is empty and fires at the sheriff, killing him. The boy is then dragged to his death behind a truck.
Edna finds herself a lone widow with little prospects. The bank informs her that the house is in danger of being repossesed. Times are bad. About this time, a black man named Moze (Danny Glover) comes around asking for work. He's rebuffed and steals some silverware. When the police bring him back to the house, Edna covers for him. She then puts him to work around the house. As a means of helping out, the bank manager gets Edna to take in his blind brother-in-law (John Malkovich).
So we've got a cast of misfits with a money problem. What to do? How about setting them an impossible task that will get them the money. In this case it's picking cotton. (Throw in John Candy and you've got the qunitessential 80's movie plot.)
Not a bad movie, but nothing special.

1 comment:

carrster said...

I love this movie! Especially the daughter as she tells Malkovich's character to "step down, step down" during the tornado. I think this is one of the first movies we rented as a family...which may be one of the reasons I liked it so much. :-)