Buddy, Caddie, Guru

Golf being the sort of game most of its players rather romantically seem to think it is--a lonely struggle with one's inner demons--it has inspired a good deal of quasi-mystical writing. The Legend of Bagger Vance is based on one of the novels--an uneasy blend of self-help and soft-core spirituality--that golfers solemnly pass from hand to hand. It is essentially the story of Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon), a local golfing great in Savannah, Ga., whose awful experiences in World War I have caused him to "lose his swing." As a result, he spends more than a decade drunk and disorderly. Then, with the Depression on (the action is set in 1931), his erstwhile girlfriend Adele Invergordon (Charlize Theron)--improbably named characters nearly always signal an improbable narrative--decides to hold an exhibition match to publicize her moribund golf club. She lures two golfing legends, the gentlemanly Bobby Jones (Joel Gretsch) and the roughneck Walter Hagen (Bruce McGill), into playing. But Savannah insists, for reasons the movie strains to make plausible, on having its own champion to cheer in the match.

Junuh resists Adele's sexual blandishments but is putty in the hands of Will Smith's Bagger Vance. Bagger appears out of the night, looking like an itinerant caddie but rather obviously a visitor from some higher plane, spouting contradictory golfing apercus. On one hand, he insists that you can't find a lost swing; you have to let it find you. On the other hand, he insists that we are all born with an authentic swing, which it is our business to rediscover. Of course, he warns, golf is never a game you can win. You can only play it. In that sense, it's a lot like life, don't you think?

Or maybe not. Maybe it is, metaphorically, more like celebrity life. As Junuh starts his 72-hole struggle with self, Jones and Hagen, he at first duffs unconfidently along. Then he finds his groove, and the crowd starts murmuring approval. This leads to arrogance, a downfall and then a confrontation with himself in the woods where one of his errant shots has landed. These woods are a lot like the ones in France where he was traumatized. But this time he has the magical caddie to whisper steadying words to him--Zen and the Art of Locker Room Twaddle--and he goes on to...

Well, let's put it this way--an ending that is not entirely unpredictable. Whether or not it is satisfying depends largely on your tolerance for extremely long golf matches. The director, Robert Redford, aiming for something a little bit unearthly, leans toward special effects, weird angles and diffusion filters to lend some visual interest--and an air of spurious spirituality--to the film. But they are often just plain annoying. And the swell of choral music under Junuh's hole in one is laughable. The actors, especially the ever appealing Smith, do what they can to ground the movie in reality, but it stubbornly remains dawdling, remote and pretentious.