'Secondhand Lions' deserves a second look

By Nathan Hathaway

Early on in “Secondhand Lions,” when 14-year-old Walter (Haley Joel Osment) is dropped off at his great-uncles’ house, Michael Caine’s character, Garth McCaan, says, “The last thing we need is some little sissy boy hangin’ around here all summer.”

Well, a sissy boy is exactly what Garth and his brother, Hub (Robert Duvall), get when Walter’s mother leaves him with his legendary and very rich great-uncles for a few months.

But the McCaan brothers aren’t your typical rich men. The two live in Middle of Nowhere, Texas in a dilapidated wooden house that looks like it was built the same year the wheel was invented.

They sit on their front porch chewing tobacco and waiting, shotguns on laps, for the next traveling salesman to show up so they can shoot at him.

They drive an old truck, eat way too much meat, use their shotguns for fishing and don’t spend a dime of their fortune, which no one knows the veracity or whereabouts of.

The McCaan brothers are basically just old coots waiting around to die. Shortly after Walter shows up, Garth makes the obvious statement, “We don’t know nothin’ about kids.”

Garth and Hub are hardened and heartless. They couldn’t care less if Walter—or anyone else in their blood-sucking family—were to spontaneously combust. Nothing much matters to them.

But Walter discovers that there’s more to his uncles than the gruff exterior. He asks Garth, the slightly-kinder of the two brothers, to tell him how they came across their money, and his uncle takes him on a swashbuckling ride through World-War-II-era Europe and Africa.

Garth tells Walter of how they were shanghaied into the French Foreign Legion and how Hub became one of the greatest and most feared swordsmen in the Sahara region. He tells Walter of Jasmine, Hub’s one true love in life whom Hub seems to be looking for each night when he sleepwalks out to the lake.

Over time, of course, Walter breaks down the callous old men and they develop quite an affinity for the boy, culminating in the 60-something Hub giving Walter the first part of his “what every boy should know about being a man” speech and Walter committing Hub to living long enough to give him the rest of the speech when the time is right.

“ Secondhand Lions,” directed by Tim McCanlies, provides a nice balance of the action-filled adventures from the brothers’ past and the touching story of two old men bonding with their nephew. The fight scenes are a little cheesy, but not enough to detract from the overall effect of the movie.

Duvall plays a great bitter old man always on edge. It’s easy to believe he honestly doesn’t like people in general. His transition to the softer side of Hub is a little too abrupt. It seems like one day he hates the world and the next he’s smiling and loving life. Maybe he’s bi-polar.

It’s tough to believe Caine is an angry man. He just doesn’t come off that way. Imagine The Joker with a frown. It just doesn’t seem right.

Osment is still young enough to be endearing, and his squeaky voice is just perfect for this role. He’s definitely the sissy boy he’s called on to play. Though Osment is outgrowing the scared little kid he played in “The Sixth Sense,” and he will never be adolescent enough to play a senior in high school, there will always be these ’tweener roles that he can take on. Just hope he doesn’t get acne.

It would be over the top to say “Secondhand Lions” is great, but it is good.

Overall Grade: B