The Burial            4 stars

I went back and viewed a gem of a movie from last year that I had missed and was not even aware of. The Burial written and directed by Maggie Betts is a throwback to the legal dramas of the nineties. But this legal drama has the distinction of starring two of the greatest talents working today: Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones. It starts with a display on the screen: “Based on real events”. (The movie is based on a 1999 New Yorker article by Jonathan Harr.) We first see hot shot personal injury lawyer Willie Gary played by Foxx in a court room doing what he does best: performing in front of a jury in the style of a preacher on Sunday morning. Gary is rich and proud of the fact that he has never lost a case. We next see Jeremiah “Jerry” O’Keefe (Jones), the owner of several funeral homes in southern Mississippi that have been the family business for decades, at home with his large family. Jerry has run into hard times, the result of a bad business decision and needs a buyer for part his business. He turned to a megacorporation owned by Canadian Raymond Loewen (Bill Camp) for the deal, but a few months later Loewen still has not signed the contract and Jerry’s lawyers, Hal Dockens (Mamoudou Athie) and Mike Allred (Alan Ruck) think that Loewen is just trying to force the funeral home business into bankruptcy so that it can then be bought up in a fire sale. It is then that the star power of Willie Gary comes to the attention of Jerry’s legal team, so they try to recruit him for the case against Loewen. In order to convince Gary to take the case though, the lawsuit damages are increased from $8 million to $100 million, making it worth it to Gary. This is all set up for the real drama that takes place in the courtroom and in meetings between the lawyers and their client as they struggle to win the case against the corporate giant. Many confrontations happen and a few surprises are discovered in testimony in traditional legal drama fashion. Although the case is about the little guy taking on a giant over a legal contract, with it being set in southern Mississippi we find out that the case is really about race, only adding to the drama. What really makes the movie is the first rate acting or rather performance by Jamie Foxx (who is probably best known for playing Ray Charles in Ray). Add to it Tommy Lee Jones (of The Fugitive) as the southern gentleman and you have a truly entertaining movie, even if it looks a bit dated, including 1990’s references to Johnny Cochran and O. J. Simpson.