You’d be hard pressed to find better evidence of movie-star charisma than The Burial, an uneven courtroom drama that’s energized by the standout performance of Jamie Foxx. As a brash personal injury lawyer tasked with leading a contract-law case on behalf of a working-class funeral home director, Foxx shines blindingly bright, his swagger and sense of humor overwhelming everyone and everything in his vicinity. It’s as appealing a turn as the Oscar-winning actor has given, and it does much to elevate this inspired-by-real events tale of unlikely alliances and an even more improbable victory.
Currently in limited theatrical release (following its premiere at September’s Toronto International Film Festival) and debuting on Prime Video on Oct. 13, director Maggie Betts’ The Burial is headlined by Foxx as Willie E. Gary, a Florida attorney who wears big gold watches and talks an even bigger game. When we’re introduced to Gary in 1995, he’s on a 12-year winning streak due to a simple and effective strategy: pick winnable cases. For Gary, that means staying in his preferred “ambulance chaser” lane and, in particular, representing Black clients with whom he believes he and his associates have a special rapport. Thus, he’s far from enthusiastic when approached by Jeremiah O’Keefe (Tommy Lee Jones)—a white Biloxi, Mississippi, owner of eight funeral homes and one funeral insurance company—to represent him in a civil lawsuit.
O’Keefe is an old-school businessman who loves his wife Annette (Pamela Reed) and his enormous brood (13 kids and 24 grandkids!), the latter of whom he intends to bequeath his family deathcare empire, which he inherited from his own father following his decorated WWII service. O’Keefe is made aware of Gary by his son’s friend Hal Dockins (Mamoudou Athie), a junior lawyer who shows him a VHS recording of Gary’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous episode that highlights his opulent mansion and private jet. O’Keefe is naturally wary of the showy Gary, but after witnessing him decimate a trial opponent, he agrees to meet him. Skepticism be damned, they forge an alliance, much to the displeasure of O’Keefe’s long-time chief counsel Mike Allred (Alan Ruck), an entitled Southern boy with a not-so-subtle racist streak.
The target of O’Keefe’s litigation is Raymond Loewen (Bill Camp), a Vancouver-based billionaire who’s buying up local mom-and-pop funeral outfits. In desperate need of cash because of financial troubles and attendant state regulatory headaches, O’Keefe agrees to sell three of his funeral homes to the tycoon. After months of waiting for his partner to sign the contract, however, O’Keefe becomes convinced that Loewen is stalling in order to force him into bankruptcy. In response, he sues him in a predominantly poor Black county, at which point The Burial practically leaps to life courtesy of Foxx’s arrival. With a glint in his eye and a smile a mile wide—which can be kind and cheery or impressively intimidating—the star affects a preacher’s fiery demeanor and gregariousness, boasting and bellowing with preternaturally suave confidence. He comes on like wildfire, and consequently, so too does the film, moving and shaking with infectious energy.
Gary isn’t warmly welcomed to Mississippi by Allred, but O’Keefe has his back, and thus he sets about devising a strategy to prove that Loewen is in the wrong—beginning with his decision to ask for a whopping $100 million in damages. The Burial doesn’t bog down in intricate litigious details, at times to its detriment; especially in its latter half, it expects us to root for O’Keefe less on legal merits than on emotional ones. Still, that keeps its momentum from flagging, save for a few passages that tip into cornball, fit-for-a-trailer speechifying. Betts and Doug Wright’s script is designed as a rah-rah crowd-pleaser, equal parts heartfelt, outraged, and amusing, and while it doesn’t always hit its intended beats—its climax is less rousing than the preceding material promised—it smartly foregrounds Foxx throughout.
The Burial is a contentious courtroom potboiler and an uplifting portrait of Gary and O’Keefe’s friendship. Additionally, it’s a tale of social justice, since Gary and Allred eventually expose Loewen as a greedy cretin who exploits disadvantaged and marginalized Black communities for profit. Race is an ever-present factor in this saga, and though that sometimes leads the film into clunky, sermonizing melodrama, it also allows the action to embrace its fundamental David-vs-Goliath spirit, with Gary (the son of a sharecropper and a self-made phenom) and O’Keefe (a family man struggling to preserve his forefathers’ legacy for future generations) bonded by their underdog status and, additionally, by their refusal (as kindred “fighters”) to meekly accept the offenses done to them by powerful others.
Betts’ direction is clean and unfussy, and Michael Abels’ score never resorts to excessive mawkishness, such that The Burial nicely coasts along on its formulaic track. Gary’s playfully adversarial relationship with opposing counsel Mame Downes (Jurnee Smollett) provides the proceedings (and Gary and O’Keefe’s quest) with an additional racially complicated layer; in one of the film’s best scenes, Gary and Downes, a Harvard-educated “python,” discuss the ongoing O.J. Simpson trial and their prosecutorial/defense dreams. Smollett, Ruck, Athie, and Camp, unfortunately, aren’t offered more than two dimensions in which to operate, and their third-act appearances at, or disappearances from, center stage are handled awkwardly. That’s even more pronounced when it comes to Jones; despite nailing his comedic lines, he fails to make O’Keefe more than a good-natured cipher. At 126 minutes, things tend to drag, even as certain subplots and characters demand greater elaboration.
The Burial casts itself in a traditional inspiring mold, yet at regular intervals it bounces around when it should be barreling forward, and its conclusion hinges on cross-examination ranting, and a last-second confession, that resounds as the stuff of fantasy. That the real-life O’Keefe triumphed in amazing fashion isn’t in dispute, but there’s nonetheless something decidedly Hollywood-ish about the way things play out. Then again, big-screen flash and sizzle is also its primary calling card, thanks to a master class in mega-watt magnetism by Foxx, who turns what could have been a standard-issue ostentatious rabblerouser into an unforgettable force of legal nature.
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