RED WING (2013)

A Hallmark cable movie from deep-think autuer Terrence Malick?  This landscape besotted adaptation of an 1840s George Sand novel (FRANÇOIS LE CHAMPI/FRANK THE FOUNDLING) feels like it might be.  Actually, Malick only exec produced, Will Wallace takes credit (if that’s the word) for directing.  With a Book of Saints æsthetic to exploit the visual harmony of man, nature and Texas in the 1970s, young Glen Powell (25 at the time) plays a naïve & sentimental foundling (a regular Billy Budd), honest, handsome, hardworking, friend to man & beast, earning his keep in the field thru his adolescence (and beyond) on a small farm where surrogate Mom (Breann Johnson) watches over him and mean, lazy surrogate Dad (Luke Perry) takes umbrage with a beer chaser.  Shying off the town ladies who hit on him, he starts rumors by not screwing indiscriminately.  No surprise, jealousy gets him kicked out of the house.  But a few days on the road finds a new farm and a chance to begin making the same personal choices & mistakes.  For some reason, the women in the film are terrible actors (laughably transparent), the men somewhat better.  Bill Paxton fine as farm owner #2, and there’s instant actor/audience rapport from kid ‘brother’ Lucas Adams.   But Wallace’s presentation so hackneyed, they might have done better setting this in the 1870s rather than the 1970s.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *To judge by the movie marque in town (they seem to be showing Robert Altman’s THE WEDDING) it’s 1978, the same year Terence Malick’s DAYS OF HEAVEN came out.  Nice try guys.  But this little Texas bijou would never have booked that Altman flop.  Though it’s  a sure bet anything they would have shown would have had just as many embarrassingly crappy music videos in it.