The Greatest

"The Greatest" is a sweet and touching tearjerker that deals with the heartache and messiness of losing a loved one.  Allen and Grace Brewer are still mourning the recent loss of their teenage son, Bennett, when a strange girl named Rose appears on their doorstep and reveals that she is pregnant with Bennett's child.  Susan Sarandon plays the grieving mom, Grace, who deals with her pain by letting it completely consume and define her.  From waking up and crying every morning in bed when she remembers that her son is dead, to breaking down at the grocery store when she passes Bennett's favorite cereal, Grace is an emotional wreck and Sarandon plays her with hysterical abandon.  On the opposite end of the spectrum is Allen (played by Pierce Brosnan), who keeps his feelings bottled up inside to the point where he immediately changes the subject whenever Bennett's name is mentioned.  Allen, with a stoic facade that barely contains the emotional turmoil inside, is the rock of the family and feels helpless because he no longer knows how to connect to his distant wife.  And Rose (played by the sweet-faced Carey Mulligan) is dealing with her own problems: She has no family of her own to turn to so she has to impose on the Brewers at the worst time possible and risk resentment for her intrusion into their private lives.  On top of that, she is dealing with a pregnancy she wasn't prepared for by a boy she loved but barely knew.  Throw in a younger brother incapable of admitting he's hurting and you have one of the most emotionally-damaged families portrayed on film.  Some may dismiss this movie as an overwrought melodrama designed to make you cry (and in part, it probably is), but I found "The Greatest" to be deeper than that.  The characters in the story are extremely believable and you feel intimately connected to them from the beginning.  And the acting from the A-list cast is top-notch; Brosnan, especially, is at his best here showing an impressive amount of restraint that only hints at the ocean of pain that roils just beneath the surface.  The Brewer family's journey from anger to acceptance is realistic and leads up to a catharsis that is both satisfying and authentic.

4 out of 5 stars