‘The Greatest’
Director: Shana Feste
Stars: Carey Mulligan, Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon
Rating: R
Grade: ?????
There is every reason to be wary of “The Great-est.” Starring Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon as parents grieving for their dead son (Aaron Johnson) and Carrie Mulligan as the pregnant teen carrying their grandchild, it is potentially the stuff of Life-time movies.
But unlike so many films (including Brosnan’s other grieving-father appearance last month in “Remember Me”), it never once crosses into gratuitous tearjerker territory. Artful and quiet, it is as interested in the family’s unique sadness and destructive coping as in their recovery and new lives. Flashbacks, thankfully, lend the charming Aaron Johnson screen time and provide some young love relief.
While “The Greatest” does, at moments, almost step into “Juno” territory when Mulligan gets cute and whips out her Polaroid, it almost always resists. This is Carey Mulligan we’re talking about, after all — she’s got this.
