Ulee`s Gold Review

Ulysees Jackson, known as Ulee, lives in a quiet Florida backwater where he keeps bees and makes delicious honey the old-fashioned way. A Vietnam veteran, and sole survivor of his platoon, Ulee`s life is full of disappointments. His beloved wife died six years ago, and his son is in prison for robbery. His daughter-in-law, Helen, has run off somewhere, and Ulee cares for his granddaughters, precocious teenager Casey and the younger Penny. Ulee`s routine life is changed when Helen turns up in the company of a couple of her husband`s old buddies who want the money they think he stashed away - and who threaten to harm the children if they don`t get it... Victor Nunez, like John Sayles, is a respected independent filmmaker with a solid body of work; he has always avoided the big studios, and he works on an intimate scale in his native Florida. Ulee`s Gold is his best yet, a simple but strongly emotional film which explores with insight the lives of ordinary people. Though the plot sounds like a thriller, thriller elements take second place to characterisation and emotion, and here Peter Fonda comes into his own, with a fully rounded and tremendously touching performance. In mood, the film is a little similar to The Hired Hand, the film Fonda himself directed in 1970; it`s a quiet, thoughtful film with a lot going on under the surface.