Movie Review: A Good Year

By Anne Brodie Nov 9, 2006, 12:00 GMT

Oscar-winner Russell Crowe reunites with “Gladiator” director Ridley Scott in \'A Good Year\'. London-based Investment expert Max Skinner (Crowe) moves to Provence to sell a small vineyard he has inherited from his late uncle. As Max reluctantly settles into what ultimately becomes an intoxicating new chapter in his life, he encounters a beautiful California woman who also lays claim to the property. ...more

Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe have gone soft. Former partners in the testosterone business (‘Gladiator’) have taken it down several hundred notches with ‘A Good Year.’

It’s a quietly amusing bucolic romance, as Crowe attempts to make us forget those phone hurling headlines. He lays on the charm and sweetness until our teeth hurt. He is shameless.

If this is the real Russell Crowe, then I am Betty Paige.

Crowe hit the mat painfully with ‘Cinderella Man,’ a tough guy film that barely made back its reported $88-million budget, a rare Crowe dud.

One has to wonder why ‘A Good Year?’ Why now? Why a soppy, spineless romantic fantasy?

Two reasons – image control and image control.

His public image is abysmal.

His STARmeter TM rating has never been lower.

The phones, the allegations of drunken rages, the ‘Cinderella Man’ episode and so forth.

Quick! Medic! Call someone!

I know! Ridley Scott, the guy who directed Crowe to the Oscar in ‘Gladiator!’

He’s got a wine country love story! Okay so it’s no Gladiator.

Eh?

Crowe plays Max Skinner, a high-powered trader who loves the power and the glory of being invulnerable. He’s admired and feared for his uncanny gift of manipulation. He is skilled at reading markets and human nature.

He receives word that Uncle Harry (Albert Finney) has died, leaving him a vineyard in Provence. Now that would thrill most of us, but Skinner is annoyed. He has to go to France during a crucial time in his business, to close the estate and sell.

This vineyard nonsense puts a real wrinkle in his game.

Seems he forgot how much he used to love it. He grew up on that estate under the kind and wise tutelage of his uncle.

He returns to Provence, where he sees the place again, as delightful as any film backdrop. However, there are challenges, but certainly nothing a world-class executive can’t fix.

Staff is surly, the wine business is flattening, the grapes are petering out and a beautiful but disdainful woman (Marion Cotillard) haunts him.

Skinner loves nothing more than a challenge and soon steps up to it.

Then the plot twist with the arrival of a young Californian girl claiming to be Uncle Harry’s illegitimate daughter (and heir).

Suddenly the problems aren’t so easy to fix. His internationally renowned talents are no help in this simple world.

But Skinner can’t fix the script.

Watching Crowe fall into a pool and get stuck in it under the gaze of the beautiful but remote woman, is just embarrassing.

He gives the aw shucks! routine a go, and that’s even worse.

It makes for fascinating ponderings, watching Crowe act like a teenager in love, knowing what we know.

As for Ridley Scott – for shame!

According to IMD, Crowe will leave his brain to science on his death. Maybe then, we will learn whatever allowed him to go through with this film.

Opens wide USA November 10. MPAA: Rated PG-13 for language and some sexual content.