The big question: Is Nick Nolte's Italian accent enough to ruin the movie, or is it not enough? The big answer: Not enough. And Susan Sarandon and Kathleen Wilhoite as his redheaded ("Murphy-haired") wife and sister-in-law do heroic damage-control. The true tale of a couple's search for a treatment for their son's degenerative brain disorder (adrenoleukodystrophy, ALD for short) is not inherently cinematic, but George Miller -- the George Miller who made the Mad Max movies -- has directed it with vast resourcefulness (cropping of figures, deep focus, odd angles), and, for all the necessary talk and medical jargon, he has shaped it into a fluid, urgent, relentlessly visual piece of storytelling. (Sample scene: a pan around the dinner table reveals the adults eating linguini with their fingers before revealing the child doing the same -- a single shot that brings you up to date on the progress of the illness and the means of coping.) Short on disease-of-the-month, TV-movie uplift, and long on agony (with background music by Barber -- the "Adagio," what else? -- Bellini, Marcello, Elgar, et al., to gang up on you and wrest a tear), it achieves a state of healthfulness in its open challenging of authority, if in nothing else. With Peter Ustinov. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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