Hal Holbrook Illuminates the Dying Light in ‘That Evening Sun’

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CHICAGO – There are no epitaphs to be written if life is still coursing through the veins. In the film “That Evening Sun,” Hal Holbrook expresses the life coursing through him, as both a great actor and innate human being.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

Holbrook portrays Tennessee farmer Abner Meecham, first seen as an old man stuck in an elder care facility. During an intriguing montage he mostly sits, disinterested in virtually every activity. He seems mentally disconnected, but suddenly in the next sequence he is packing a bag and escaping on foot from the perceived prison. The facility sends a taxi to retrieve him, but he bribes the driver to take him elsewhere.

The destination is his farm. Meecham still owns the land, but discovers some squatters living in his main house. It turns out his son (Walton Goggins) has rented the house to one of the most disliked residents of the community, Lonzo Choate (Ray McKinnon), and the squatter also has an opportunity to buy the land. Choate has a wife (Carrie Preston) and daughter (Mia Wasikowska), and is treating the farm as his new home and a way to redirect his aimless life.

Meecham refuses to leave the land he views as rightfully his, and stubbornly takes up residence in the sharecropper’s house, where the Choates have moved all his possessions. In what becomes a difficult moral wrestling match, Meecham takes on Lonzo Choate, the fretful son who wants him back in the care facility and his own rage against the dying light. Abner Meecham desires to come home.

Continue reading for Patrick McDonald’s full review of “That Evening Sun”

Old Pros: Hal Holbrook as Meecham and Barry Corbin as Thurl in ‘That Evening Sun’ Photo Credit: Cooper Dunn for © Dogwood Entertainment

Continue reading for Patrick McDonald’s full review of “That Evening Sun”