The Sunset Limited

If I told you that Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones did a movie, where they were the only two actors, written by Cormac McCarthy, and produced by HBO, would that interest you? Of course! Yet, it came and went in 2011 and made barely a ripple in the culture.

Sure, both greats have had questionable track records in recent years, but The Sunset Limited shows they still have Oscar winning chops, though they're both probably on the outer limits of their award winning form.

It's too bad that McCarthy didn't write more screenplays, because imagining peak, Pulp Fiction era Sam Jackson spouting his words is awfully tantalizing. It's immediately clear that they have the kind of  actor-screenwriter relationship that Christoph Waltz and Quentin Tarantino do--it's like they share a brain, like the writer knows exactly how the actor's brain and face and soul work. Jackson is the perfect actor to deliver McCarthy's ponderous, verbose, but still humble lines.

Tommy Lee Jones has been in a McCarthy production before, as the titular Old Man, but he really lets loose here. The plot is that Jones tries to kill himself by jumping in front of the titular train, but Jackson stops him and brings him to his ratty apartment to try to talk some life into him. Jones becomes gradually more impressed with the mind and soul of Jackson, and they have an earnest back and forth in real time for over an hour. It's like a tennis match, where the stakes are a man's very soul, and the validity of drawing breath and experiencing life itself. Jones, a college professor, is on the defensive most of the time, just volleying Jackson's ideas back to him, and Jackson is trying his damnedest to convince Jones that life is a beautiful thing.

This is nice enough to watch, as Jackson gets several great, long, juicy monologues which he tears into with FURRRIOUS anger levels of gusto. It's as much as anyone could expect from Jackson at this point in his career, and shows how much better he is than the roles he's taken lately. But Mr. Jackson loves to get paid.

As the discussion goes on, and Jackson offers Jones his third cup of coffee, anything to keep him away from that train station, Jones finally springs into action. It becomes clear that he's been holding back considerably the whole time, out of respect for the sincere attempts Jackson was making to convince him that life isn't shit. But he reaches a point where he can't hold back any more, and unleashes the full power of his darkness. Jackson holds his head in his hands and writhes around as the evilly true words come tumbling mightily from Tommy Lee Jones's weathered, craggy face.

It isn't just that he is defending his right to self-terminate--he is giving an intensely erotic ode to death itself, which he reveres and relishes more than anything in life. Death itself is the most attractive thing possible, beyond just being a solace. It contains unrivaled wonders unavailable to the living--like the pinnacle of quietness, the absence of all community, the sturdiness of the most ancient thing imaginable.

Though there are times in their discussion where we think Tommy Lee Jones is on the verge of buying into Sam Jackson's love of life, at the end we see that no power can come between a man and his one true love. Especially if that love is death herself. What really shatters Jackson at the end is his realization that he has never, and probably will never, love anything quite so intensely as Tommy Lee Jones loves death.

Perhaps the film made barely a ripple in the culture because of how very dark it is. But I'll take McCarthy being dark over McCarthy trying his hand at big-budget star-studded mainstream thrillers any day.