EVERYTHING THAT RISES

REVIEWED BY BRETT WILLIS

Our rating: 4 out of 5

Because of: language, violence, nudity

Rated:

This directoral debut of Dennis Quaid is a heart-warming and sometimes heart-breaking family film. Not too deep, not sensationalistic, just good drama. Jim Clay (Quaid) was raised by Garth (Harve Presnell) after his parents died. Jim has become a good, hard-working and conscientious man, but he doesn’t often show emotion. Jim now has a wife, Kyle (Mare Winningham) and a son, Nathan (Ryan Merriman) who’s about 12 years old. He operates a Montana ranch with the help of buddy Red (Meat Loaf), Garth (who still lives on the ranch), and Nathan.

Jim takes a no-nonsense approach to Nathan, pushing him to perform adult tasks properly.  hen Nathan tries to take a short-cut which his father forbade him to take, and causes an accident that breaks his horse’s back, Jim requires Nathan to be the one to shoot the horse. Jim Loves Nathan, but doesn’t take time to say so, and doesn’t touch him much. There’s a financial crisis brewing...the local bank (which is now owned by a big chain) may foreclose on the ranch if Jim doesn’t come up with some cash money.  A big-time dealer, Alan Jamison (Bruce McGill), is offering Jim $7000 an acre or more for a portion of the ranch adjacent to some other lands Jamison is developing. But Jim, who likes things to stay as they are, refuses to sell. He won’t even sell Jamison an easement so the future residents of Jamison’s new “mini-ranches” can get to their own property.

Then an accident permanently injures Nathan, and it could be argued that Jim was responsible for that accident – or at least, for its consequences – in the same way that Nathan was responsible for the accident that injured the horse. This creates a number of personal and family crises as well as another financial crisis. Jim is the key to how the drama will play out. He obviously needs to be a little bit flexible in his approach to progress. He needs to confront what’s happened, help out where he can, and not leave Nathan’s care entirely to Kyle and Garth. He needs to avoid being over-protective. And more than ever before, he needs to openly express and communicate his love to Nathan.

Language is mild and the brief, occasional abuse of deity may actually be prayers rather than epithets. There’s a small amount of innuendo, mostly involving Meat Loaf and played for comic relief. There’s accidental violence, the off-screen shooting of a horse, an act of vandalism by an adult, and a bar fight. After he’s disabled, the pre-adolescent Nathan falls in the bathtub and, to his chagrin, has to have his mother help him. He’s very briefly seen nude, in a discreet side view with his foreground leg pulled up, that doesn’t expose him either front or rear. Nathan’s folks find a commercial photo of a woman in a bikini in Nathan’s stuff, and Jim breaks out of his reserved persona and asks Nathan if he’s worried that because of his disability, he may never get to be with a real woman. It turns out that Nathan’s greatest fears are even more fundamental than that.

Yes, everything turns out well. Allowing for the content issues, this is worth watching with pretty much the entire family.