Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall) is an alcoholic washed up country singer. He can't pay his motel bill and starts working for the widowed owner Rosa Lee (Tess Harper) who is raising her son Sonny. He turns his life around and they get marry. His new life is interrupted when a reporter drops by. His ex-wife Dixie Scott is a country music star and she's performing nearby. His story is printed in the newspaper. He goes to her concert and sees her manager Harry (Wilford Brimley). She angrily warns him not to see their daughter Sue Anne (Ellen Barkin).It's a powerful performance from Robert Duvall. That's the heart of the movie. He puts all of his skills to work. He's great when he's quiet. He's explosive when he needs to be. The camera work and the style could do more to add more substance to the material. It's a great showcase for Duvall and Tess Harper also gives a good performance.

I saw it in the library and noticed it was an award winner, so I checked it out and watched it with my mother. Neither of us were impressed.The story is about a former country music star who has collapsed into alcoholism and vagrancy, and ultimately winds up at a rural motel/gas station run by a young widow and her young son. He offers to work for her, and she accepts, telling him he could not drink. But he is still a country music legend, and he is first visited by a reporter, then a garage band who want to meet him. Also in the region are his ex-wife, also a country music star, and their daughter. The rest of the story, of course, has Mac's past catching up to him.While the performances and characters are all credible, especially of the little boy who acts like a genuine little boy and not a precocious stereotype, the story is predictable and holds little in the way of surprises. The song that makes a major part of the story isn't even very good. We don't even learn much of anything about the country music industry or culture.Not bad but not good either. It must have been a lean year at the Oscars.

I won't go into describing the plot because so many other people already have, but there's one thing that I don't think anyone else has touched on and I wanted to give my opinion on it.If you look at the two women in Mac Sledge's life, that's where you'll see the point of the whole story.Rosa lost her young husband to a war not long after they got married and could never find out how or even when he died. She speaks matter-of-factly about it now but she spent many years raising a son alone, doing what she could to put food on the table. She owns a run-down gas station/motel in the middle of nowhere and has practically nothing of monetary value, yet she thanks God for His tender mercies toward her.Dixie, on the other hand, is rich and famous. Even tho she too was a single mother she gave her daughter "everything money could buy." And when her daughter is killed, Dixie cries, "Why has God done this to ME?" We can only hope that, as his life with Rosa continues, Mac eventually learns to accept -- and trust -- happiness in small doses.

A gentle quiet film, wonderfully written by Horton Foote, and featuring a magnificent performance by Robert Duvall as an alcoholic ex-country singer star, who rediscovers himself by finding a family. Ordinarily this kind of upbeat view could be treacly, or seem like a Hollywood simplification. But here it's simultaneously rich and sparse, and even in a world where life is ultimately good, there are still tragedies big and small, broken hearts and terrible losses. This is that rare 'feel good' film that earns the right. The supporting work by Tess Harper and Betty Buckley is worth mentioning as well, as is Bruce Beresford's understated but always effective and evocative direction.But ultimately it's Foote's screenplay, set in a world where predictability and cliché are the usual, that manages to pull off the almost impossible and create something unique, tender, and new.