Tender Mercies is a gentle, understated story of a broken down country singer

* * * (out of 5)

Wow. Robert Duvall underplaying a role. I didn't think it was possible. Certainly not since The Godfather. Duvall usually comes into a scene like King Kong with a Southern accent, but here in Tender Mercies he winds it down with a touch so light, it feels like his performance is made out of meringue. But a good one it is. He won his only Oscar as Mac Sledge, the alcoholic, broken-down, ex-country singer who is now working for a widow and her boy in a small Texas gas station/motel.

Mac was once a big shot. A big star who wrote a ton of songs for his now ex-wife, Dixie Scott (Eight is Enough's Betty Buckley). Mac used to be a big problem, beating on Dixie and one time almost killing her. She hates him to the point now that she hasn't allowed him to see their daughter in 9 years. And he hates her too, calling her "poisonous." We don't see any of this bad behavior, instead we are left to see a man who is paying mentally for his sins and an ex-wife who is flourishing without him.

I like Duvall with bravado. He's not a big man, but in many roles he plays them with such a strong heart that you know he has the biggest dick in the room. One of my favorite roles of recent years is as an opposing attorney to John Travolta in A Civil Action. Like a big bear off to hibernate, he loses himself in a small room to listen to a Red Sox game on the radio and peel an orange during his lunch break. He plays those eccentricities so well.

But as Mac, he's a man lost inside himself and the slow pace of rural Texas life only adds to that calm. I felt like the calm suited him, but I would have loved to see some of that drunken grizzly that made his ex-wife hate him before. It is a good performance and at least he was recognized once for his handsome career. Buckley seems out of her element playing a bitter Loretta Lynn type. His new wife, Rosa Lee (Tess Harper) is a better woman and a tougher person, who lost her young husband to Vietnam. If she suffers, she does it quietly and makes a great wife for this man. And to be honest, her singing is better here as a choir singer than Buckley is on stage. One of the best performances in the film belongs to the boy, Sonny (Allan Hubbard). According to IMDB, he never played another part and that's a shame, because he was a real natural.

Director Bruce Beresford, an Australian, does a nice job of capturing the quiet of rural Texas. He did a similarly good job, with the South in Driving Miss Daisy. Writer Horton Foote wrote the screenplay to To Kill a Mockingbird, so he knows his way around the South.

One last thing about this film. We are so used to movies with modern urban men, who are outward and dramatic, hugging and kissing and crying that when you see a film like this when even a husband and wife who love each other don't kiss and hug it sure feels like a different time. It was 1983, but it might as well have been 1883.

The Freditor