Twenty years after Unforgiven, it’s still a bit of a shock to see Clint Eastwood as a frail old man. Now 82, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the iconic Man with No Name can no longer embody the lethal mythology he so elegantly personified, but it still a shock nonetheless to witness Eastwood (as elderly baseball scout Gus Lobel) stumble as he climbs bleachers or dent his precious Mustang because he can longer back the car out of the garage in a straight path. Aging is the ultimate sin in Hollywood, as so many beautiful women and men have learned before they faded into obscurity, but at least in this case it works in favor of Eastwood’s grumpy character.
It has been four years since Eastwood’s last grumpy character portrayal (in the under-appreciated Gran Torino), and the old pro still knows how to command the screen. Having handed the director’s reins to producer buddy Robert Lorenz, Eastwood frees himself to concentrate on creating a memorable portrait, and this he does. Gus Lobel is yet another inimitable Eastwood portrayal — prideful, sarcastic, lonely, regretful, yet thoroughly professional — in a gallery that now stretches back more than fifty-five years. He’s been acting in movies longer than I have been alive. And as he has proven again and again over the years, Clint Eastwood is a much better actor than he is usually given credit for being. At present he is the only active octogenarian movie star in Hollywood, and he can still do the job.
The movie itself is not quite as good. It is an interesting story, both in its father-daughter dynamic, which is rather pedestrian but played earnestly by Eastwood and talented Amy Adams, and its baseball angle, which I generally happen to favor. By that I mean, like the old-style scouts embodied by Eastwood, Ed Lauter, Chelcie Ross and Raymond Anthony Thomas in the movie, I believe that computer modeling is not, and cannot provide, a full portrait of baseball talent. There are intangibles that pure numbers cannot indicate, that only careful human observation can reveal about any ballplayer. This movie’s premise takes that stance to an extreme, but I still favor it over the purely mathematical profile that convinces team executive Phillip Sanderson (Matthew Lillard) to overly tout an arrogant high school slugger (Joe Massingill).
The baseball angle comes back around at a climactic media photo op that, while emotionally satisfying, is as absurd as can be. Any team that would allow what takes place here to happen in front of national media representatives should simply not be a professional sports franchise. And, of course, the personal drama surrounding Gus’ failing eyesight, the daughter’s chance of a law-firm partnership and her budding romance with former ballplayer Justin Timberlake (who is quite likable and has strong chemistry with Adams) all finds a nice, if rather unconvincing, balance in this formulaic movie. Trouble with the Curve is pretty good while it lasts but there’s little of lasting value here, which also, unfortunately, includes what may be the swan song performance of one of the great movie stars of the last half of the twentieth century. ☆ ☆ 1/2. 30 September 2012.