Rating: NR
Genre:
Drama
Release Date: 04/03/2007
SubTitles: English/Japanese/Por/French
Dubbed: English/Japanese/Por
Sound: DD5.1
Run Time: 144 Minutes
Flags: Violence, Adult Situations, Questionable for Children, Adult Language
Distributor/Studio: Sony Pictures
The film version of
The Natural pulls off the neat trick of conveying the spirit of the
Bernard Malamud novel upon which it is based, even while changing both the outcome and the meaning of
Malamud's closing chapters. In his first film appearance in four years,
Robert Redford plays
Roy Hobbs, a farm boy with a hankering to be a great baseball player. With his faithful homemade bat "Wonderboy" in hand,
Roy heads to the big city. En route, he arouses the fascination of the mysterious
Harriet Bird (
Barbara Hershey). Luring the boy to a hotel room,
Harriet asks
Roy what he wants out of life.
Roy brashly responds he wants to be "the best there is," whereupon
Harriet whips out a gun and shoots
Roy down. Sixteen years later, a humbler
Roy Hobbs emerges from the bush leagues to become a 35-year-old "rookie" on the 1939 lineup of the New York Knights. He soon becomes the team's star player, and in so doing once more attracts enigmatic woman
Memo Paris (
Kim Basinger), the glamorous niece of the Knights' manager
Pop Fisher (
Wilford Brimley) and the mistress of Rothstein-like gambler
Gus Sands (a curiously unbilled
Darren McGavin).
Roy's fascination with
Memo compromises his ability to play, but this time he finds salvation in the form the angelic
Iris Gaines (
Glenn Close), his childhood sweetheart. From this point forward, the script for
The Natural bears very little resemblance to the
Malamud original. Without giving anything away, it can be said that
Roy Hobbs is given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compensate for the mistakes of his youth, despite the demonic intrusion of inexplicably spiteful sports writer
Max Mercy (
Robert Duvall).
The Natural elevates the art of slow-motion photography to new heights; while this technique would become precious and boring in later baseball films, it works beautifully here, as does the decision by director
Barry Levinson and cinematographer
Caleb Deschanel to convey the symbolism inherent in the story in purely visual rather than blatantly verbal terms. (If the characters
told you that the story was a retelling of the Camelot legend in baseball terms, would you have watched?) Another plus is the pastoral theme music by
Randy Newman, which has been well utilized on sports broadcasts and "human interest" TV
documentaries ever since. The baseball scenes in
The Natural were staged at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, New York.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
;)
