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BY PETER KEOUGH
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107 MINUTES | Providence Place 16 + Showcase An Unfinished Life is a highly finished movie. Lasse Hallström, adapting the Mark Spragg novel, unrolls the narrative without a wrinkle. The Wyoming landscape sparkles and Bart the Bear steals the show as a pseudo-Faulknerian metaphor. Robert Redford, playing someone his own age for a change, puts in a polished performance as Einar, a septuagenarian coot living on his sparse spread with Mitch (Morgan Freeman), his long-time and now crippled ranch hand. Even Jennifer Lopez is irreproachable as Jean, the widow of Einar’s son; she descends on the homestead with her 11-year-old daughter, Griff, who’s played by Becca Gardner in the film’s only breath of life, unfinished or otherwise. Will family bonds overcome the bad blood of the past? Will Jean’s last abusive boyfriend show up to play the bad guy? Will Freeman, the voice of Olympian wisdom as the narrator of War of the Worlds and March of the Penguins, play a similar role here? An Unfinished Life is a foregone conclusion.
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