The Great Santini

Director: Lewis John Carlino

Overview

Bull Meechum (Robert Duvall) loves fighting almost as much as he loves the Marine Corps. Profane, cocky, and arrogant, he's a great fighter pilot -- and he knows it. His boss hates his guts, but knows that if he's going to straighten out his lagging squadron, Meechum is the man to do it. The story and irony of The Great Santini is in Meechum's total intolerance of family life and fatherhood. Meechum has a lovely, supportive wife, Lillian (Blythe Danner), an earnest, likeable son, Ben (Michael O'Keefe), three smaller children, and a good home, but Meechum finds the pastoral nature of peacetime totally incompatible with his gung-ho nature. So he begins to drink. He drills his family unmercifully, like recruits. He hammers his son relentlessly until, in a basketball game, his son fights back, and the family cheers Ben's efforts. Tension builds in the household until, during one drunken night, Meechum breaks down. Based on a best-selling novel by Pat Conroy, The Great Santini earned critical raves but fared poorly at the box office. Duvall's performance as Meechum is generally regarded as one of his greatest.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/16/2013
UPC:	0883316841891
Original Release:	1979
Rating:	PG
Source:	ALLIED VAUGHN
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital]
Language:	English
Time:	1:56:00
Sales rank:	21,983

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Robert Duvall	Lt. Col. Bull Meechum
Michael O'Keefe	Ben Meechum
Blythe Danner	Lillian Meechum
Lisa Jane Persky	Mary Anne Meechum
Stan Shaw	Toomer Smalls
Theresa Merritt	Arrabelle
Julie Anne Haddock	Karen
Brian Andrews	Matthew
David Keith	Red
Paul Mantee	Col. Hedgepath
Michael Strong	Colonel Varney
Bennett Liss	Corporal Atcherly
Joe Dorsey	Coach Spinks
David Frankham	Captain Weber
Jan Stratton	Mrs. Weber
Paul Gleason	Lieutenant Sammy
Al Garcia	Pedro
Lew Horn	Captain Brookout
Michael Rougas	Colonel Muillnax
Bill Nelson	1st Cousin
Ronnie Cross	Honor Guard Sergeant
David Simmons	Basketball Player
Nancy Black	Cheerleader
Lisa Collins	Cheerleader

Technical Credits

Lewis John Carlino

Pat Conroy

Herman Raucher

John E. Pommer	Executive Producer
Charles A. Pratt	Producer
Lewis John Carlino	Screenwriter
Pat Conroy	Screenwriter
Herman Raucher	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Lewis John Carlino brings Pat Conroy's novel about a top Marine pilot who terrorizes his family vibrantly to life. Robert Duvall stars as the tyrannical Bull Meechum, a cocky fighter pilot who has trouble adjusting to a desk job and domestic life. He runs the family with the same military precision he has always brought to his job, and is unable to express his love for them in any normal way. While making the negative effects of the pilot's behavior on the entire family clear, the film concentrates on his competitive relationship with his sensitive teenaged son, Ben (Michael O'Keefe). The two play an ongoing sequence of emotion-laden games of one-on-one basketball, which reach an ugly climax when the boy defeats the father for the first time, a rite of passage. The film later tries to back away from Bull's near-psychotic reaction to this experience, and his attempt to humiliate his son, couching his behavior in good-old-boy clichés which are now difficult to swallow, and it simply trails off into a series of vignettes and sentimentality.Duvall resists all attempts to make this character attractive in one of the best outings of his career. Blythe Danner as his wife and O'Keefe are also superb.