Two big-name actors of past generations in one fact-inspired film: essentially a rallying call for Oscar attention. Luckily, the presentation of The Burial, the recent Prime Video original, is not quite so self-serious, coming across as a fun view of an infamous mid-90s case where an underdog small business owner, led by a charismatic lawyer, took on a massive funeral corporation in a contract law case.
The Burial Plot Summary
Though The Burial is about the case of funeral home owner Jeremiah Joseph O’Keefe, the star here is personal injury lawyer Willie E. Gary, who joins O’Keefe’s lawsuit to sue the Loewen group over a contract dispute. The New Yorker writer Jonathan Harr wrote the article that inspired the film, though many extra characters and twists further dramatize the 1995 case.
The Twin Forces of Southern Law in The Burial
Despite the original article not even being one of Harr’s best-known works, the overarching details of the story seemed destined for a film adaptation. O’Keefe, an elderly Mississippian white man (played by Tommy Lee Jones), hires the rich and locally famous Black lawyer Gary (played by Jamie Foxx) for his contract law case, who previously only attended personal injury cases in Florida. The uniting facet of the film’s narrative is their mutual desire to go against the corporation trying to crush small business owners like O’Keefe.
Using this premise, The Burial conjures an entertaining story of exciting legal gambits, one-upmanship, underdogs, and a dash of racial tensions. Though not nearly as severe a commentary on race relative to the United States legal system as the murder trial of O.J. Simpson or the Central Park jogger case, The Burial keeps enough Southern prejudice on the table at all times for enjoyably dramatic purposes. As the litigation plays out, the audience will be more thrilled in an amusing way than disturbed.
Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx in ‘The Burial’
Foxx and Jones Deliver, As Always
No one could deny that The Burial follows the conventions of its genre. But at the very least, it never drifts into tedium thanks to confidently inobtrusive directing and co-writing from Maggie Betts and the appealing draw of Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones. Fans of these actors will be the first in line for The Burial, and lovers of legal dramas, too, particularly those preferring the appealingly diverting side rather than the occasionally ridiculous seriousness of the genre. This romp stays consistent enough from beginning to end for another enjoyable entry that, while perhaps not Oscar-worthy, is decent and lightheartedly pleasurable.
Not that The Burial is without intellectual value; when the instantly dislikable mega-capitalist Loewen shows pleasure in profiting off of death, or when tensions flare between the O’Keefe’s pompous original lawyer and the Black men new to his legal aid, the viewer naturally gets riled up. Betts and the rest of the production only give us reasons to root for O’Keefe and Gary’s victory, using the tactics shared by all classic tales of the little guy versus the man. Sometimes, an adeptly-told underdog story is all you need to keep the audience happy.
The Burial is streaming now on Prime Video.