OxfordPress.com

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Verdict: The good news is that Kirk Douglas is back; the bad news is that he's back in this.

Details: Starring Kirk Douglas, Dan Aykroyd and Lauren Bacall. Directed by John Asher. Rated PG-13 for profanity and sexual content. 1 hour, 37 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: "Diamonds" could be described as a requiem for a heavyweight. Not this film's aging boxer, but the actor who plays him, Kirk Douglas.

The movie, alas, is a total lightweight, a well-intentioned but clumsy vehicle for the remarkably game and courageous Douglas, who has struggled back from a debilitating stroke he suffered a few years ago.

In a gee-who-thought-of-that? bit of typecasting, Douglas plays Harry Agensky, a tough former welterweight champion who has suffered a stroke. When we first meet Harry, he's dutifully going through some demeaning but necessary speech-therapy exercises, dispensed on video by a dismayingly cheerful young woman. Harry is a survivor, but he's all too aware that he was a better boxer than parent. Now that his beloved wife is dead, he's afraid he'll end up in a nursing home.

Thus the setup for a bonding trip with his estranged son, Lance (Dan Aykroyd), and Lance's all-but-estranged son, Michael (Corbin Allred). The old man insists that he knows the whereabouts of a stash of diamonds he earned by taking a dive 60 years ago. So, goodbye, Vancouver; hello, Reno.

The multigenerational banter is excruciating; it makes lines like "suck face" from the slightly similar "On Golden Pond" sound like Shakespeare. Further, when Douglas is off-screen, the movie shrivels into dust. Aykroyd, so surprisingly touching as another out-of-touch son in "Driving Miss Daisy," is stiff, while Allred spouts his dialogue as if he would really like a regular spot on a hit TV series. The final blow to whatever dignity the picture might have mustered is a coyly embarrassing trip to a brothel where the madame (Lauren Bacall, providing another much-needed beacon of professionalism) has a heart of gold, the girls are all loving and compliant and the place itself looks like a Victorian gingerbread house.

Bacall provided similar distaff ballast in John Wayne's lovely last film, "The Shootist." Her role is small but invaluable, a reminder of why legends become legends. But the movie's well-earned raison d'etre is Douglas. The hair is gray, the shoulders slightly hunched, the speech slurred. But Douglas is still Douglas. Spartacus and the corrupt reporter in "Ace in the Hole." Doc Holliday and the doomed cowboy in "Lonely Are the Brave." Van Gogh and the honorable officer in "Paths of Glory."

One of the movie's treats is director John Asher's use of clips from Douglas' breakthrough film, "Champion," as "flashbacks" to Harry's fighting career. (One drawback: That movie's vitality only underscores this one's listlessness.)

All in all, Douglas is a diamond in a rough script.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service

[an error occurred while processing this directive]