'Bobby Jones' powered by need to golf

By Michael O'Sullivan
The Washington Post

BOBBY JONES: STROKE OF GENIUS (PG) Two Stars (Fair)

In "Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius," Jim Caviezel portrays the golf legend who retired from competition at the age of 28. Guy D'Alema

It isn't that "Bobby Jones" is especially bad. It's just not especially good, either.

Jones' major claim to fame was winning four major tournaments (the U.S. Amateur, U.S. Open, the British Amateur and British Open) in a single year, 1930, a feat that has yet to be equaled. And not only, to his eternal glory, did he do it all without ever turning pro — "Money," one character wryly observes, "it's going to ruin sports" — but he quit a year later in a kind of voluntary martyrdom.

Jones, so the movie tells us, was a true amateur, in the sense that he played for the love of the game and not fame or fortune. Why then, you might wonder, does he speak of feeling trapped by the sport? And why does playing make him so miserable, leading to a nervous condition that affects his stomach and self-medication through cigarettes and alcohol?

The reasons were complicated, I have no doubt, but director Rowdy Herrington (who co-wrote the script with Tony DePaul and Bill Pryor) doesn't help uncomplicate them. His story merely lays out the facts, episodically, relying on an accrual of peripheral detail — a harrumphing grandfather (Dan Albright), a neglected wife (Claire Forlani), a debauched but talented rival (Jeremy Northam), an avuncular, sports-writing mentor (Malcolm McDowell) — to substitute for insight into the man. And Jim Caviezel's portrayal of Jones, while certainly adequate in most regards, does little to shed any real light on the character's apparently tormented psyche. (I say "apparently" because we're not given much to go on besides shaky hands and the occasional hurling of glassware.)

"Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius" expects, I think, that viewers will read something mystical, if not in Jones' accomplishments, then at least into the game of golf itself. Otherwise, why cue the soundtrack's heavenly strings, ethereal wind chimes and martial bagpipes every time Jones tees off, in slow motion, with a long arcing drive?

Bobby Jones was a great athlete, I'll grant you that. But Caviezel, with the shameless encouragement of Herrington, seems to think that he's still playing Jesus Christ.