Redford's `Bagger Vance' is a `Natural' for the golf-course set

Movie review

XX "The Legend of Bagger Vance," with Matt Damon, Will Smith, Charlize Theron. Directed by Robert Redford, from a script by Jeremy Leven, based on the novel by Steven Pressfield. Several theaters. 125 minutes. "PG-13" - Parental guidance advised because of some sexual content.

In 1984, Robert Redford starred as baseball player Roy Hobbs in "The Natural." It was his most self-congratulatory role, a schmaltzy, idolatrous fairy tale on behalf of its golden-boy star, shamelessly masquerading as a gutsy baseball picture.

From a wide-eyed baseball fan's perspective, the film pushed all the right buttons, dousing its audience with tidal waves of emotion and gratuitously massaging their tear ducts. From a cinematic perspective, however, "The Natural" was phony mythology, a film that ignored the sport in favor of charting one ballplayer's ascension to demigod status. Many cried when Hobbs hit his legendary home run into a shower of sparks, amidst Randy Newman's soaring score, but afterward, the movie made you feel cheap and used.

I'd forgotten this brand of overwrought manipulation in a sports movie until watching "The Legend of Bagger Vance." It's hardly a coincidence that Redford directed this sentimental tale of a down-and-out golfer's rise to spiritual clarity and divine greatness; he knows the romantic part well and his latest film is "The Natural" of golf movies.

The film uses a flashback framing device, as if to rationalize its nostalgic tone and tall-tale narrative. An old man (Jack Lemmon) recalls growing up in late 1920s in Savannah, Ga., and the shining moment in the life of his idol, local golfing sensation Rannulph Junuh. Matt Damon plays Junuh, a role Redford undoubtedly sees his younger self playing. If you can't guess who's the hero, Damon is consistently lit like a troubled god, his yellow hair glowing, an ever-present halo surrounding his head.

In an extended narrated sequence, we learn that Junuh was once the pride of Savannah - an amateur golf champion, married to a Southern belle, Adele Invergordon (Charlize Theron). But that was before World War I. After returning home shell-shocked, Junuh quit golf and disappeared.

Junuh gets a second chance, however, when Adele decides to stage a celebrity golf exhibition with a $10,000 prize on her late father's golf course. She nabs two top golfers, but the city demands that a local golfer represent Savannah. Junuh is tracked down, now a drunken gambler, but he refuses to play.

Until one night, when literally out of nowhere, Bagger Vance (Will Smith, deftly mixing comic relief with infomercial-inspired wisdom) walks into Junuh's front yard and convinces him to start swinging the clubs again. For a $5 fee, Vance promises to be Junuh's caddy and, well, his mystical Zen master of sorts.

So Junuh must remember his swing, win the tournament and reclaim Adele's love and respect. The script by Jeremy Leven ("Don Juan DeMarco") sets things up so nicely and neatly that the movie is over before the golf match even begins - even though the 72-hole event constitutes half of the film's two-hour running time.

In past films, Redford explored ordinary undertakings, such as fly-fishing ("A River Runs Through It") and horse training ("The Horse Whisperer"), transforming them into meditative, otherworldly allegories.

Here, Vance hammers Junuh - and us - with inspirational speeches relating golf to life (coming across like Obi-Wan Kenobi reading a self-help book).

And cinematographer Michael Ballhaus lovingly captures course play as heaven on earth.

Yet, the film's metaphorical message feels silly and pretentious, partly because every character is a stereotype, but particularly because it can't transcend its heroic tone. The weak material can't support Redford's lofty intentions.

Perhaps needing a crowd-pleaser, Redford the actor seems to have clouded the vision and talent of Redford the director.

How ironic: In a fable about a man trying to regain his swing, Redford seems to have temporarily lost his.