A Good Year --- Starring Russell Crowe; Directed by Ridley Scott

Max Skinner is as cut-throat as they come in his dealings as an investment broker, and thinks nothing of taking advantage of other people. He has become hardened after years at this line of work, and has become quite good at doing it. This puts him at the top of the game, and has made him a very rich man. It comes as a shock when the only relative he has, an Uncle in France, dies and leaves everything to him. This includes a chateau and vineyard in Provence, where he spent a lot of his childhood. Stuck in the present, it takes him a while to actually start to realize what he has cut out of his life, and for a businessman in England, moving to France isn't an option in his playbook. Right away thoughts of selling the land, and hopefully a valuable vineyard take center stage, and he heads down there to simply check out the property before a sale.

When he gets down to France, Max starts to reconnect with a lot of the things he had long forgotten. Down there, life moves much more slowly, and he has come to the conclusion that this pace does not fit his life. Through many different flashbacks, we get to see the interactions he had with his Uncle so many years ago, and just how important that relationship was to the senior. It almost seems like the younger Max never saw what he had, and now that he is grown he doesn't see a way of getting that back, but it is up in air as to whether he really cares anyway. The story becomes one of showing the countryside of France, and the revelations that one man begins to have when he starts to realize that life isn't all just about making money.

The story of A Good Year is based upon the novel by Peter Mayle, but I cannot help but think that something got lost in the process of translating that book to a screenplay. Some of the innocence must have been lost, and some of the subtleties of subplots must have also been misplaced, because the film ends up seeming more disjointed than flowing. Director Ridley Scott does a superb job of showing the French countryside’s, and the sites and sounds of the vineyards make it a great tourist film in the sense that more people will want to go enjoy its beauty. However, what he fails to do in several instances, is take advantage of the moods and settings in order to further relationships between the central characters. What ends up happening is a rushed second and third act that peaks too early and doesn't end up fulfilling on all its promise.

Russell Crowe stars as lead Max Skinner, and was decent in the part, but not as emotional as I may have hoped. His character is one that is very reserved, and never actually steps out of that box wherein his character is created. It would have been nice for him to have an outburst or two, or maybe even an over-the-top comedic moment in order to place him more in realism than in film. There were several supporting characters including Albert Finney as his Uncle that were quite good, but when the lead starts to get boring, the film really isn't going to succeed in the end. There were times that I thought this story would turn out to be quite good, and there were admittedly moments where the story does shine, but on the whole it could have used more work, and it seemed almost like a wine that had been tasted too early. I give it my recommendation as a film worth seeing, but not if you have a long list of others to get to first.