Movie Review: Act of Love (1980) directed by Jud Taylor
It’s the first Father’s Day since the death of the Cybulkoski family patriarch. After church, the family has an outdoor lunch. Older son Leon (Ron Howard) announces that he and his brother Joseph (Mickey Rourke) will be painting their mother’s house, “barn red” and finally clearing off the last few acres of the family land. Despite it being Sunday, Leon has to go off to his construction job. While he’s away, Joseph goes on a motorcycle ride with no protection through that patch of rough terrain. There’s an accident.
Leon is called back from his job to the hospital. Initially, it looks as though Joseph just broke a shoulder, but on closer inspection it appears that a bone in his neck has been crushed. Joseph cannot move or feel anything below his neck, and everything above the neck is in constant pain. He especially hates the tube that’s been inserted in his mouth to help keep his airways clear. While the doctors are not quite ready to call the case hopeless, it’s pretty obvious that Joe is a quadraplegic, and there’s almost no chance that he’ll ever recover.
Joseph, an active man who defines his life’s worth by what he can do, is in despair. In addition, while it’s not directly said at this point, the Cybulkoski family is cash-strapped and can ill afford the specialized care he will need for the long, lonely years to come. Joseph begs Leon to end his suffering, making him pledge his word of honor that he will do so if there’s no hope.
Operating on little sleep and high emotions, Leon takes a sawed-off shotgun into the hospital and blows his brother’s brains out.
This TV movie was based on a book by Paige Matthews, which itself was loosely based on an actual court case. The controversial subject of mercy killing and being headlined by popular actor Howard contributed to it performing well in the ratings.
The tense drama leading up to Leon’s action is over fairly quickly, and the movie shifts into courtroom drama. Leon’s employer pays for defense attorney Andrew Rose IRobert Foxworth) to take the case. The lawyer suggests going for a plea bargain or pleading insanity, but Leon is convinced he did nothing wrong and should not go to prison or an insane asylum. Mr. Rose must navigate how to plead “not guilty” when his client very much did pull the trigger. This involves looking at the particular culture the brothers were raised in (their father was an Eastern European immigrant with…strong views on manliness and what makes life worthwhile), the effects of sleep deprivation, and other factors that might mitigate Leon’s crime.
Ron Howard does a pretty good job as Leon, but his All-American boyishness doesn’t quite convey the character as a working poor man of Eastern European heritage. Most of the others do a decent TV movie level job of acting.
The movie moves along nicely, and I never felt like it bogged down. That said, it’s shot in a pedestrian style, and I can see why it’s a footnote in Ron Howard’s career. The Mill Creek print I watched had poor color balance that made many of the characters overly red-faced.
This movie might be a good choice for sparking discussion on mercy killing, the rights of people with disabilities and the legal system’s treatment of motivation. But I suspect there are better movies you could use for the same discussion.
