Trouble with the Curve

Trouble With The Curve (DVD)

Screen icon and multiple Academy Award® winner Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino, Million Dollar Baby) returns in front of the camera once more for this heartfelt sports dramedy about an aging major league baseball scout on the cusp of retirement. Confronting his own mortality and his failing eyesight, he sets out on an unforgettable road trip to Atlanta to scout a hot high school batting prospect. Along the way, he tries to mend his troubled relationship with his alienated lawyer daughter. Directed by Eastwood’s longtime producing partner, Robert Lorenz, this diamond in the rough dramedy represents another moving return to form for the legendary Eastwood.

]]> Clint Eastwood has developed a killer changeup during his career, using his iconic status and mainstream credibility to take audiences to some thoughtfully unexpected places. (How the man behind the lyrical Letters from Iwo Jima and A Perfect World can also peel off something like the cheerfully meatheaded The Rookie is one of the most enjoyable mysteries in Hollywood.) The biggest surprise behind Trouble with the Curve, Eastwood's first time in front of the camera since Gran Torino (and his first appearance in a film he hasn't directed since 1993's In the Line of Fire), is how resolutely unsurprising it is, telling its story with an unfashionably retro simplicity. Still, even if the resolution is easily guessed, the star's trademark glower and a stellar supporting cast make it an exceedingly pleasant journey. Pulling a 180 from the methods espoused in Moneyball, Randy Brown's script follows Gus (Eastwood), a cantankerous talent scout for the Atlanta Braves whose old-school ethics are on the outs. While on what may be his last recruiting trip, Gus is reunited with his estranged daughter (Amy Adams), an upwardly mobile attorney still smarting from her father's distancing techniques. First-time director Robert Lorenz wisely places his actors front and center, with the sparkling Adams, Justin Timberlake, Matthew Lillard, and the great John Goodman all delivering terrifically tuned performances. Ultimately, though, Trouble with the Curve rises and falls with Eastwood, who keeps the material from drifting into cornball territory by sheer force of will. Squinting balefully at even the most minor annoyance, and rasping out a succession of mildly profane wisecracks, he generates more than enough star power to keep the film on track. If he hasn't earned the right to coast occasionally, then for Pete's sake, who has? --Andrew Wright