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Tender Mercies Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 15 Reviews)

Overrrated, Overhyped, Overlong And A Waste Of Celluloid!
This would have to be one of the most depressing movies I have ever seen. Robert Duvall plays Mac who is a "Burned Out" country singer (note the Hollywood cliche). Mac wanders around in the movie in a type of daze as if "the mean Repo man he up and took away his pickup truck and his wife she left him for his best friend and the whiskey jug is his nemesis and his dawg he up and died".One cannot help but wonder if Mac could use a prescribed course of Prozac to cheer him up.I give this movie 5 stars because I like Tess Harper although why she would put up with a guy who acts like his favourite toy was stolen is beyond me.It seems like many reviewers of this movie consider a movie to be "exqisite" and "captivating" if it is about some old drunk who is seeking so called 'Redemption". I think Mac should enrol in a 12 step program or appear on Dr. Phil or Oprah.

Spawned Some Knockoffs
Tender Mercies from 1983 has spawned some knockoffs, made for TV films that you see on the Country Cable station. TM is still one of the best portrayals of poor Texas brush folks on flat, flat terrain. Sometimes tumbleweed tumbles by. Anyhow, one looks at that big sky and a country song comes to your lips. Robert Duvall plays Mac Sledge stoically in tight blue jeans and cowboy boots. Duvall slips off the Godfather set and takes that Texas accent where men sort of mumble homily's at a moments notice. Ah, he can't sing, but he gets a nice voiceover during a honky tonk gig.

So former country star Duval has fallen hard, but ends up at a rural Austin motel to take up with Tess Harper, a widow of the Vietnam War. Her young son needs a father. The ready made family makes do with gas station revenue while Duval dries out. Local citizens, boys in a garage band lure the has-been songwriter back into the music business. Former wife Trixie still hates his drunken ways and won't let Mac connect with his young daughter, teen Ellen Barker. After that, there's a tragedy.

I watched TM with a teen daughter and we enjoyed it. We're not talking Fellini or Welles here, but it kept me interested.


God's tender mercies
Excellent film. Wonderful acting. Outstanding script about grace and redemption. One of my all time favorites.

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