The Burial: 7:10The Burial (2023)
This going to be the most "wgaf" review ever, but the same could be said of the movie. However, I watched it therefore you get my opinion.
The Burial (2023) is another in a long line of schmaltzy, feel good, loose biography comedy dramas designed to kill an afternoon and give you a quick "TIL" of very medium upvote worthy content.
It stars Tommy Lee Jones as real life Burial director Jerry O'keef and JF as Willie E. Gary a high power personal injury lawyer.
Jerry O'keef is on the verge of bankruptsy, losing all his funeral homes when he's approached by a burial corporation about selling all his homes. Initially disgusted with their attitude of profit over humanity, he agrees to sell enough homes to get out of bankrupsty.
Rather than close the deal they string him along for 6 months, knowing he'll be forced to sell all or face debt collection as his debts mount.
He decides to sue them, knowing at best he would have to settle for less than hes already in debt, but his principles force him to take them to court because he feels unjustly treated, he manages to talk Willie E. Gary into helping with the idea that it could be a big media case and it also happens to take place in an all black county. Willie had initially declined because he specializes in injury but also strictly helps black communities.
As things become more clear about O'keef during the trial it's revealed that he's both a war hero, a serious Philanthropist of impoverished communities and banned the KKK from his city while brief mayor and the story becomes less about contract law and more about classism and racism.
It was a solid movie. Tommy lee Jones and Jamie Foxx are both fine, the story pulls at the heart strings, but not firmly. You feel good for 2 hours and kill an afternoon, but theres nothing coming out of left field and its not winning any oscars.
7/10
If I had any explicit notes I think they needed to punch up the dialog, its very bland procedural with the exception of a rather compelling scene between Jamie Foxx and his counterpart played by Jurnee Smollett, debating the OJ trial. I got the definite impression that was an add-in maybe by Foxx himself. He provides all the energy in the film.
As you've already provided the synopsis, and an overall assessment I agree with, I'll simply add a couple of my own personal takes on this film.
Might have been an editing issue, but it felt kinda rushed. Foxx comes across as an overly-confident, egotistical, and very particular lawyer, and Jones as a humble, disaffected-if-jaded pushover talked into the quest for unreasonable justice by Foxx which Foxx is more than ready to admit is for his own (Foxx's) benefit. Foxx drags everyone along with him into the teeth of a basically unwinnable trial, and upon his first procedural failure, laments that he "likes" Jones on a personal level, and wishes to stay on for Jones' benefit. However, at no point do we really see this relationship develop beyond a cursory level. I mean, there are a couple of moments of levity between the two of them, but Jones plays such a convincing limp fish countering Foxx's flamboyant ego, that it's hard to buy that the latter might have gravitated to the former in any substantive way.
Still, t'was a decent courtroom drama; one I'd like to see YouTube's Legal Eagle scrutinize, but he's [to my knowledge] not done any of those types of videos in a while. The whole "Trump is a thing that won't go away" has pretty much dominated his content for quite some time.