Lisa Jane Persky

(On Cable TV, January 2021) There’s something to be said about actors willing to give themselves up to their character while keeping their own ego in check. I’m hardly the first one to point at Robert Duvall’s performance in The Great Santini as one of those great examples of an actor committing to playing a borderline loathsome one—the infamous basketball sequence, in which a grown man can’t accept being beaten by their own son, is one of those masterclass examples of an actor serving a character without caring for their persona. Much of the film is built around the same principles: The lead character is a top-notch fighter pilot, a capable military leader, but a terrible husband and an even worse father-of-four. The Great Santini doesn’t have a plot as much as a series of episodes in service of a character study—the film ends (unsatisfactorily) when the character does. Duvall is very good as the mean prankster, grudge holding, inflexible military officer unable to maintain a distance between the job and his family—but then there are the other actors surrounding him, from the ever-cute Blythe Danner to redheaded Lisa Jane Persky’s screen debut to a solid performance by Michael O’Keefe as his son and rival. Despite the pranks and the grander-than-life nature of its lead character, The Great Santini is not exactly an enjoyable experience: it’s a film about the trauma of living with an oversized character and the energy it takes to power through it. The plot is secondary and treated as such. As a showcase for Duvall, on the other hand, it remains essential.