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OUR FATHERS

The big names — Christopher Plummer, Brian Dennehy, Ted Danson, Ellen Burstyn — all are that distinguish this Showtime "original drama" about the Church sexual-abuse scandal from the made-for-TV-movies that used to be a network staple. Danson is in genial, wisecracking Sam Malone mode as attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who with the help of his plucky secretary (Kathleen Laskey) takes on the Harvard/Yale Law big shots and wins a $10 million settlement for his victimized clients. (How much he took for himself is not disclosed.) Plummer, looking like an actor who could play Macbeth (as he has), is an improbably conflicted and naive Bernard Cardinal Law, and Showtime abjures any suggestion that he might have been following orders. (Jan Rubes appears in one scene as an improbably doddering John Paul II.) Dennehy plays Lowell priest Dominic Spagnolia, who fulminates against Cardinal Law from his pulpit before (trumped-up?) accusations of sexual molestation are made and a former gay lover comes forth, whereupon the film turns Father Spags into a tearful poster boy for priests who are homosexual but not perverts. The owner of a powerful face that can be impassive and oblique when he chooses, Dennehy might have been a better choice for Cardinal Law. Burstyn has just one scenery-chewing scene as the mother of seven boys all victimized by John J. Geoghan; local favorite Will Lyman is grimly effective as Church attorney Wilson Rogers Jr. The Boston Globe is depicted as the crusading newspaper that took on the Church and broke the story; there’s no mention of Kristen Lombardi’s articles in the Phoenix the year before, but Showtime does throw in leggy Leah Pinsent as Marge Magnus, a fictional Globe reporter who catches Garabedian’s eye. Plus the requisite end titles telling us that victim Patrick McSorley took a drug overdose and Cardinal Law was made archpriest of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. (No word on Mitch and Marge, however.) The film was based on Newsweek reporter David France’s book, and it reads like an illustration of its source rather than an "original drama," with grayish villains but lily-white heroes. (129 minutes) Debuts this Saturday, May 21, at 8 p.m. on Showtime.

BY JEFFREY GANTZ

Issue Date: May 20 - 26, 2005
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