Sully is a troublesome man in his 60s in a small town during winter, a tenent in a house run by the older Miss Beryl. He makes ends meet by accepting construction jobs for the wealthy Carl, and works with the always broke Rub. When Sully hitchhikes one day, he is picked up by his estranged son Peter, who has marital problems with his wife. Sully comforts his two grandkids, Peter’s kids, and gradually bonds with Peter. Sully also flirts with Carl’s estranged wife Toby, since Carl has a mistress. When Toby offers him to leave to Hawaii with her, Sully refuses, and instead stays and helps Peter reconcile with his wife. Sully then returns to the house of Miss Beryl, with Carl’s dog.
Director Robert Benton’s 8th feature length film, “Nobody’s Fool” is a quiet, gentle, humorous ‘slice-of-life’ drama without a story, though with two surprising erotic moments that somehow break this dormant mood (the protagonist Sully talks with Toby in her office, and she mischievously lifts her sweater up to show her breasts for a split second before he leaves; Carl and his mistress playing strip poker, and losing literally everything they wear). While occasionally too lukewarm, overstretched and with not that much inspiration at every turn, the movie stand and falls with its main star who is featured in almost every scene, and since Paul Newman is simply excellent as the charming grouch Sully, “Nobody’s Fool” stands the test of time. One of the funniest sequences is after a police officer has been giving various fines to Sully, and this time blocks the route of his truck driving on the sidewalk with the police car, and aims his gun at Sully. But Sully just looks at Peter, sitting next to him in the truck, and says: “This is where a smart person would get out of the car...”, but then defiantly just continues to drive the truck towards the cop. Earlier in the film, Sully is not afraid to threaten his boss Carl: “You are going broke, but before you do, you will pay what you owe me!” This runs in the tradition of older people playing the cynical grumpy wise guy to get awards, with more of less justification in the narrative structure. However, while he is an excessive troublemaker, Sully also has a gentler side to him, for instance in the scene where he comforts his scared grandchild by telling him to “be brave only for one minute” at a time, and then gives him a stop watch to time that minute when he needs it. The episodes do not align into a storyline, but meander all around, leaving a rather loose structure behind, yet the film succeeds in its goal of a melancholic observation of small town people interacting with each other, revealing a theme that most people will grow old without doing much with their lives, just like Sully, but that they will find comfort in small moments of kindness and happiness with other people like them.
Grade:++
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