Jamie Foxx highlights 90s-throwback legal drama, ‘The Burial’
The kinds of movies that packed multiplexes in the 90s now (mostly) exist exclusively on streaming services.
Case in point: “The Burial,” the legal thriller starring Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones, inspired by a real-life trial in which a small-town funeral home owner attempted to take down corrupt corporate overlords.
The story takes place in 1995, adding more throwback energy to this punchy, well-acted court procedural that evokes the golden age of John Grisham blockbuster adaptations.
Foxx plays Willie E. Gary, a successful, showboating personal injury attorney with a flawless trial record. Jones plays Jeremiah “Jerry” O’Keefe, patriarch of a family-owned funeral home business who faces financial turmoil after a contractual dispute with a nationwide funeral home company, the Loewen Group.
When O’Keefe and family friend/attorney Hal Dockins (Mamoudou Athie of “Elemental,” “Jurassic World: Dominion”) first approach Gary with their case, the flashy attorney only sees a complicated case that could ruin his unbeaten track record. However, after uncovering some of the Loewen Group’s questionable business dealings, including predatory practices against minority communities across the South, Gary decides to take his confrontative style into the more granular procedures of contract law.
The Loewen Group, for their part, counter Gary by hiring one of the country’s youngest and fiercest black attorneys — Harvard-pedigreed Mame Downes (Jurnee Smollett, “Birds of Prey,” “Lovecraft Country”). While Gary and Downes bond over their shared experiences in a white-dominated profession, it’s all-out war between the two litigators in court.
“The Burial” builds a steady momentum by focusing heavily on courtroom speeches and cross-examination, an especially impressive feat considering the typical, lusterless mechanisms of contract disputes. The twists and turns of the case may not be particularly realistic (especially the court’s tolerance with Gary’s performative style), but it’s undeniably entertaining. The trial in “The Burial” would play well as a satisfying two-part season finale of your favorite David E. Kelley legal drama, and certainly better than your average episode of “Suits.”
The cast of “The Burial” makes the movie, with the consistently charismatic Foxx front and center (the Oscar-winner is also fantastic in a supporting role in Netflix’s wild sci-fi indie, “They Cloned Tyrone” from earlier this year). Jones is playing a warmer, friendlier version of his prickly career archetype too, and his low-key presence complements Foxx well. The supporting performances do wonders as well, especially Smollett, who matches Foxx’s courtroom intensity. Notable character actors Alan Ruck and Bill Camp also swing in to do their reliable thing.
The movie makes a special point to emphasize and explain the “inspired by” component of the “inspired by true events” tag at the end of the film. Still, the real life biographies of Willie Gary and Jerry O’Keefe are worth the Google search. Director/screenwriter Maggie Betts (2017’s “Novitiate”) and co-writer Doug Wright (Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of “I Am My Own Wife”) pump “The Burial” with some fiction to match the style and narrative of a once-sturdy Hollywood genre now, unfortunately, relegated to a no-frills release on Amazon Prime.
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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.