Word: meechum
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Since his 1962 debut as Boo Radley, the monster and savior of two Alabama children in To Kill a Mockingbird, Duvall has given more than their due to some indelible movie creatures. The names Frank Burns (MASH), Tom Hagen (The Godfather), Lieut. Colonel Kilgore (Apocalypse Now), Bull Meechum (The Great Santini), Mac Sledge (Tender Mercies) and Gus McCrae (Lonesome Dove) summon sharp, overlapping impressions. The odor of anachronism hangs on most of these characters; they are uneasy with and suspicious of the modern world. While everyone else has gone slack and disorderly, they mulishly hew to an old or private...
...Keefe save an inferior screenplay with their almost uniformly excellent performances. But bad editing also diminishes the impact their talents have on the film. These problems riddle the scenes between O'Keefe and Stan Shaw, who plays Toomer, a stuttering Black "boy" who, together with his mother, the Meechum's maid, and 14 or so large German shepherd dogs trained to attack white folks, lives in a trailer on the outskirts of the town...
...problems with this subplot transcend technical incompetency, however: the treatment of the race problem is offensive. The Blacks in the film are ridiculously stereotyped; Toomer, known as a "boy," even to young Meechum, who is portrayed as one of Toomer's closest friends; Toomer's mother, an enormous Black woman who loves her job as a maid, and is obsequious in her gratitude toward Mee chum for going out late one night to help Toomer defend himself against some local budding Klansmen. Carlino destroys the impact of the protest against the treatment of Blacks by portraying the grateful nigger, grateful...
SUDDENLY, without transition or explanation, two trails in the forest of The Great Santini meet, and the audience finds itself five miles above land in the cockpit of Meechum's airplane during a training run. The film has run out of steam on race relations, and so abruptly resumes its portrayal of the problems encountered by a warrior without a war. Meechum, reminding himself several times that he is the Great Santini, runs into engine trouble while he has departed from his flight plan to do some aerodynamic acrobatics, and he dies in the crash--ostensibly because he stays with...
...Meechum may die, but the problem of the "can-do" war mentality is not resolved. The Great Santini portrays death as the outcome of Bull Meechum's arrogant, overconfident life. But it is an accidental death, and no one is transformed as a result. The final shot in the film is the same as the beginning: the family, minus Dad, travelling to a new home in a different city. Carlino examines Meechum's mentality, then throws up his hands and says, "So what...