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THE IRON ORCHARD
Director: Ty Roberts Cast: Lane Garrison, Ali Corbin, Austin Nichols, Allan McLeod, Hassie Harrison, Lew Temple, Donny Boaz, Temple Baker MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:52 Release Date: 2/22/19 (limited); 3/1/19 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 21, 2019 A lot happens in The Iron Orchard, an adaptation of Tom Pendleton's 1966 novel, from affairs, to multiple business dealings, to rises and falls in the world of West Texas oil, and to a few avoidable deaths. All of it—the good and the bad—can be attributed to the hubris of its main character, a poor grocery clerk who, hoping to impress a young lady of means, becomes a poor oilfield worker who, feeling a need to prove himself, becomes an oil magnate. It's one of those quintessentially American morality plays, in which a man gains the world amidst the untapped frontier and, in the process, loses his soul—as well as just about everything else—to the American Dream. Director Ty Roberts certainly provides the tale with the scope to which it aspires, with the movie's wide shots of the Texas plains and its accurate recreation of the timeframe (the late 1930s to the mid-1950s). The movie certainly looks the part of its epic story. Gerry De Leon's screenplay, though, rarely, if ever, stops to examine the narrative beyond the surface of its melodramatic events. Our central figure is Jim McNeely (Lane Garrison), who shows up in West Texas to do manual labor for an oil company, after his rejection by the family of his sweetheart Mazie (Hassie Harrison). The work is as hard. His co-workers try to make him quit. Jim ends up falling for Lee (Ali Corbin), the wife of a company engineer, and the two run away together to start a new life, with Jim looking to create his own fortune apart from the big companies. Filling out the cast are multiple characters whose lives are changed—usually for the worse—by Jim's decisions and de-evolving temperament. They're mostly pawns to fate and Jim's increasingly risky business dealings, who still seem too willing to wait around for the man to become better. Meanwhile, Jim is a one-note character who dismisses anyone who isn't able to give him what he wants at any given moment. The story, then, settles into a repetitious study of how cruel Jim, driven by greed and pride, becomes. By the end, The Iron Orchard wants Jim and us to appreciate the little things, but up until then, the story doesn't have time the details that would give us a reason to do so. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for language and some sexual content)
