 |
| Images courtesy of VCI Entertainment |
Arizona based character actor turned indie writer-director
Michael Worth had the most unlikely luck when he was making what turned out to
be elderly acting family patriarch Rance Howard’s final film Apple Seed,
a kind of The Straight Story or Lucky bit of soul searching
involving an old man nearing death on a quest for some measure of redemption
for his past sins as a criminal.
Released two years after his death, this warm heartstrings-tugging
dramedy as unlikely buddy road movie won’t break the mold or redeem the
writer-director-actor’s weakness onscreen but Rance is such a joy to watch we
just kind of go with this star studded episodic effort featuring Clint Howard,
Adrienne Barbeau and Robby Benson. Not
quite on par with Hal Ashby or Bob Rafelson but absolutely spoken of the same
breath.
Recently evicted middle-aged Prince Mccoy finds himself
jobless and homeless, bombing from town to town before ending up back in his
home turf looking to rob his local bank on the coast of Apple Seed where
he grew up. Crossing paths with
ex-convict hitchhiker Carl Robbins (Rance Howard) toodling along with his top
hat and suit jacket whom he quickly comes to rely on for money and
transportation, the two find an unlikely bond in one another with both drifters
leaning on each other for support while picking up other drifters along the way
in Prince’s 1967 Mustang. While
intending to commit a crime, Prince’s sojourn with the eighty-year-old
hitchhiker takes him down a different path including but not limited to a
crippled singer, a lonesome waitress and a teen runaway before culminating in
an unlikely kind of Dog Day Afternoon inspired third act.
Simple, straightforward and direct with an endearing final
performance from the great character actor Rance Howard who also acts onscreen
alongside his son Clint Howard in a devastating father-son reunion of sorts, Apple
Seed presented on disc with two cuts (director’s version running six
minutes longer), making of footage and a tribute to Rance Howard is a pretty
easy young-at-heart elder tearjerker that perhaps moves at a languid pace with
no clear goal but winds up being a redemption tale spoken of the same breath as
Gran Torino or more recently The Holdovers. Most of the movie rests on the infectious
charm and screen presence of Rance Howard who has always been a familiar face
in film but rarely ever gets his own feature film largely to himself.
Visually speaking the panoramic widescreen vistas lensed by
Chia-Yu Chen are exquisite and perfectly capture the mountainous Arizona
terrain interspersed by ponds and wetlands while also using many juxtapositions
between wide-angled images and medium close-ups of the principal actors. The original score by Ian Hatton is mostly
fine but nothing extraordinary to write home about. Primarily this is, despite the less than
stellar performance from Michael Worth, an actors’ movie with Rance Howard
gleefully taking center stage. The
cameos throughout are fun with Adrienne Barbeau appearing as a country gal
waitress rather than a scream queen and Robby Benson as an old friend with a
checkered past though Clint Howard’s turn is really startling with its dramatic
weather.
While easy and perhaps a bit of a saccharine Hallmark movie,
Apple Seed nevertheless still manages to invest the viewer in the
offbeat promenade through the Arizona countryside and small American towns with
Michael Worth and Rance Howard.
Michael’s acting is rusty but again we’re so concerned with Rance
Howard’s comings and goings in this little cross country American epic we
really don’t care. Something of a
farewell that also gives Howard ample room for expressiveness and the ability
to still emote strongly, Apple Seed is a cozy little summer movie that
stokes familiar aging dramedy embers, yes, but still manages to be a
well-rounded heart warmer. Again not
quite up to par with some of the other more affecting elder road movies that
have come and gone but certainly with its heart and mind in the right place.
--Andrew Kotwicki
