This Courtroom Drama Showcases Jamie Foxx’s Best

The dynamic of the two leads works and is helped by the racial injustices at play. While on paper the trial is not about race, in practice, it seems to have everything to do with it — and the fighting between Gary and his opposing counsel, Mame Downes (Jurnee Smollett), a smart Black woman with a flawless education, can get tense. The case is between two white men, yes, but much of what Gary and his associates are arguing has to do with the Loewen Group’s business practices, and those practices are horrible, especially when it comes to lower-income Black folks.

Maggie Betts and her co-writer, Doug Wright, who based their screenplay on a «New Yorker» article by Jonathan Harr, are shrewd in the way they broaden the scope of the case. This includes scenes like one in which O’Keefe goes to Florida and bonds with Gary’s mother (Summer Selby), and another where Gary and O’Keefe are introduced to a graveyard without headstones because the enslaved people who rest there couldn’t afford them. All of this plays into the human element of the film, which Betts, in her sophomore feature after «Novitiate,» presents in a straightforward, no-frills manner. But who needs frills when you have Willie E. Gary?

However, I do wonder about people watching this movie at home. In my screening, people were audibly laughing, gasping, and otherwise responding in ways that those watching at home just won’t get. That audience response adds something to a film like «The Burial.» People watching at home, though — which is primarily the way viewers are going to watch this film — are likely to watch alone or with one or two other people, maybe while looking at their phones or doing their laundry. While it’s a tough market in theaters for movies like «The Burial,» it’s a shame more people can’t have a communal experience with this project.

«The Burial» sounds like a serious endeavor, and in parts it is. But the laughs and excitement from my audience assure us that not everything in the film is so serious. While we know the outcome of the trial from the get-go, it’s how we get there, and the human drama that accompanies us on the way, that makes this a film worth seeing.

«The Burial» is in limited theaters now and comes to Prime Video on October 13.