The Burial: We totally dig it!

The Burial (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.20.23

You can’t beat a well-mounted underdog saga … particularly one that boasts veteran scene-stealers such as Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx, and is based on actual events.

 

In this case, rather unusual actual events.

 

When their case takes an unexpected turn for the worst, Jeremiah O'Keefe (Tommy Lee
Jones, left) wonders if he did the right thing, even with shrewd attorney Willie Gary
(Jamie Foxx) at his side.

Biloxi-based entrepreneur Jeremiah “Jerry” O’Keefe was in the “funeral business” his entire life, continuing a family tradition that dated back to the end of the Civil War. By the time he reached comfortable old age, O’Keefe owned eight Mississippi-based funeral parlors, along with a parallel funeral insurance business.

But the approach of the 21st century found O’Keefe in financial difficulty for reasons beyond his control. In an effort to raise funds, he agreed to sell three of his funeral homes to Canadian businessman Ray Loewen, who headed a consortium that owned an increasingly large number of Canadian and American funeral parlors.

 

Loewen’s preferred tactic: He’d purchase available funeral homes in a given region, undercut smaller competitors until they went out of business, and then scoop up their operations at fire sale prices.

 

In O’Keefe’s case, Loewen simply stalled on signing and honoring their contract, waiting for the Biloxi businessman to go bankrupt. O’Keefe, justifiably outraged, got a lawyer.

 

But not just any lawyer…

 

What subsequently went down has become a thoroughly engaging legal duel in the capable hands of director Maggie Betts, who also co-wrote the script with Doug Wright, based on journalist Jonathan Harr’s equally absorbing October 1999 New Yorker article. But this isn’t merely a depiction of courtroom theatrics; Betts and Wright spend the lengthy first act introducing and developing the primary players, all well portrayed, so that we sympathize with everybody.

 

Except for Loewen. Bill Camp makes him an arrogant, unapologetic swine: an amoral skunk we want brought to his knees. Camp is the ideal villain.

 

On the surface, Jones’ O’Keefe is an amiable fellow: a doting husband and father of 13 children (!), and grandfather to 43. (We glance in awe at his wife, Annette, played with similar devotion by Pamela Reed.) But Jones’ bearing and expression also display the steel of a long-successful businessman, decorated World War II fighter ace, and former two-term mayor of Biloxi. This isn’t a man to take lightly.

 

And, let it be said, Jones is a longtime master of the cut-them-dead withering gaze.