One wants to be on The Great Santini‘s side because movies based on character are an endangered species these days, and Duvall/Meechum undeniably is a character. Carlino’s direction is worse: Ralph Woolsey’s cinematography is muddy as usual, the flow of images within any sequence is so ragged as to be nonexistent, and the only shots that are certifiably composed and designed are clichés. Son resents the hell out of Dad, and drops an occasional hint that he may not sign on for an obligatory four-year tour after he’s completed college (he’s currently a high-school senior) but their relationship is also fiercely loving—as, indeed, virtually all Meechum’s relationships appear to be, one way or the other.ĭuvall, and Danner as the wife, are excellent actors capable of drawing rich characterizations (compare Apocalypse‘s Kilgore as written and Kilgore as incarnated by Duvall) but Carlino’s script is so lacking in focus and all but the most mechanical kind of structure that mostly they can only spin their wheels here—spin them at a high pitch, but spin them nonetheless.
#Enigma parallax menu issues movie#
The rest of the movie enlarges on the dynamics of life in a Marine household, with especial attention being paid to the relationship of Meechum—self-styled The Great Santini—and his 18-year-old son (Michael O’Keefe). Bawling mock-serious—but also deadly-serious—orders at the familial troops, he packs them up at 0300 hours to drive to Beaufort (that’s bewfert), S.C., and settle into his new billet. The film gets underway in Spain, 1962, with a demonstration of Meechum’s superior aerial tactical skills, then a demonstration of his hellraising skills at a party jointly celebrating his air team’s besting of their Navy rivals and his own transfer home to assume his first squadron command—and incidentally rejoin his devout Southern Catholic wife (Blythe Danner) and four offspring.
Its central showpiece and only detectable raison-d’être is Robert Duvall’s tour-de-force characterization of Marine super–fighter-pilot and congenital bad-/hardass “Bull” Meechum—an extension (whether or not it was so intended) of Duvall’s Col.
It is, for one thing, a small movie, without the sort of topical hook that might lend it the opportunistic urgency to make a distribution and publicity push worthwhile.
Orion’s The Great Santini has been sitting on the shelf for about a year now and seems unlikely to move off it unless pay-TV pops for it.* The second (surely there can’t be more?) directorial effort of screenwriter Lewis John Carlino ( The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea was the first), the film seems unsalable in the present Hollywood scheme of things.