It is 1963, and Lurene like a lot of Americans loves the Kennedy's almost to the level of hero worship. Perhaps it is her only escape from a life that consists of servitude to an indifferent husband who stays glued to the tube.
Then a light comes into her life, as she receives that news that John and Jacqueline Kennedy are coming to Dallas. She takes a neighbor with her, a woman in a wheelchair mostly along so that Lurene can get through the crowd at the airport.
Suddenly a murmur goes through the crowd and we already know what has happened. John's murder hits Lurene like one of her own. She decides, against her husband's protest that she must go to the funeral in Washington.
Along the way she stumbles across a black man (Dennis Hysbert) and his daughter. She automatically assumes that the girl is kidnapped and later realizes her mistake. This takes on a series of events that leaves them in a stolen car running from the law.
This is where the movie falls apart. I was so content to let this movie be a character study about two people trapped, she in a boring marriage, he in a society that is trained to hate him. I thought the director Jonathan Kaplan would be content with just these two people. Instead he piles on an unnecessary and distracting plot developments.
Michelle Pfeiffer's performance is wonderful, giving us a woman who has led a sheltered and boring life. A lot of her best dialogue in the movie is made up of assumptions that she has about this man. Hysbert is the perfect counterpoint, a man who has seen more of the world and realizes the dangers surrounding him.
'Love Field' is a movie that has a smooth unforced flow in it's first 45 minutes then feels compelled to weigh it down with a lot of plot baggage. I loved the rapport between the characters in this movie but the ebb and flow of the development of their characters get bogged down with too many bumps in the road.
Then a light comes into her life, as she receives that news that John and Jacqueline Kennedy are coming to Dallas. She takes a neighbor with her, a woman in a wheelchair mostly along so that Lurene can get through the crowd at the airport.
Suddenly a murmur goes through the crowd and we already know what has happened. John's murder hits Lurene like one of her own. She decides, against her husband's protest that she must go to the funeral in Washington.
Along the way she stumbles across a black man (Dennis Hysbert) and his daughter. She automatically assumes that the girl is kidnapped and later realizes her mistake. This takes on a series of events that leaves them in a stolen car running from the law.
This is where the movie falls apart. I was so content to let this movie be a character study about two people trapped, she in a boring marriage, he in a society that is trained to hate him. I thought the director Jonathan Kaplan would be content with just these two people. Instead he piles on an unnecessary and distracting plot developments.
Michelle Pfeiffer's performance is wonderful, giving us a woman who has led a sheltered and boring life. A lot of her best dialogue in the movie is made up of assumptions that she has about this man. Hysbert is the perfect counterpoint, a man who has seen more of the world and realizes the dangers surrounding him.
'Love Field' is a movie that has a smooth unforced flow in it's first 45 minutes then feels compelled to weigh it down with a lot of plot baggage. I loved the rapport between the characters in this movie but the ebb and flow of the development of their characters get bogged down with too many bumps in the road.