What you have here, as told by the title, is a person who many considered a real life hero. This was a small town sheriff who took it upon himself to bring the criminals to justice, threatening himself and his family, and risking all to end the crimes. What I find quietly fascinating about this, is the real life person got his wife murdered, brought some criminals to justice, and then was himself later possibly murdered. That's the fucking reality. The fantasy is this little friendly TV movie about a person so good, so positive, that person could nary exist.
Do I sound negative? Well, fuck, I am. Today sucks. This all feels pretty lame. What the fuck am I doing, watching some TV rehash or Walking Tall on the internet? Fucking promise I made to finish that fucking 70's boxset.
Buuuuut, the movie isn't bad. It's not what happened in real life. In this, Buford is a local do-good cop, who decides that he is going to stop this guy who's been making moonshine that has killed some people. It's gonna be hard to get the guy in though, cause he's got a lot of power behind him, and Buford is just a small town sheriff without many resources. So just like in real life, he takes it on himself and uses methods "off the book" to get at this criminal.
Brian Dennehy plays the unfortunately named Buford Pusser. It's a masterful performance. He's a complex, layered man in this film. Part stereotypical "good guy," but the movie lets him have a dark edge to him, and is given some real humanity instead of being the catch-all bland good guy.
One thing I have to complain about. The gang of bad guys, besides one very small scene of terrorizing Pusser on the road, aren't made out to be a real threat it felt like. They are gonna ambush him in the end, and there's the road scene, but besides that, the film follows Pusser so close that we basically never see them trying to eliminate him. We spend a ton of time following Pusser and his various good deeds that it's like, we get it, he's the good guy. And that also means we never think for a second that he'll fail or that anything bad could possibly happen to him.
I felt like the movie did have a certain charm to it though. It felt embracive of it's era. It also had some small heart-warming scenes of Pusser with his family. Whether it was the film, or just me, but I had several odd thoughts during the film:
1) Isn't it weird that people used to have to shave with a straight razor? That's honestly terrifying. I have, in my lifetime seen the proliferation of the electric beard trimmers and razors. These inventions and their growing popularity basically gave birth to the "perpetually short tiny beard" also known as "perma-stubble" which I sort of hate, yet one has to admit looks fucking sexy. There's just no way anyone would have been able to do it back then. Using scissors to trim it down to 1/4 inch? Yeah right! That shit would be damn near impossible.
2) Having kids used to be something everyone did. I know that's kind of weird, but it's like, in these older movies, you would absolutely never have an older character who WASN'T a family man. It's sort of amazing to see that difference now.
Anyways.....ummm.... It's fine, it's kind of slow, but it is also a bit charming and innocent. I give it 3 stars, mostly for Dennehy's acting.
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