The Burial is a load of razzle-dazzle bullshit; a retroactive, BlackLivesMatter-pandering, quote-unquote true story wherein an old white man plays the race card on another old white man.
One of the old white men successfully sues the other for hundreds of millions of dollars, but since the judge, the jury, and the lawyers (including the defendant’s) are all black, this counts as a moral victory for the African American cause (at least in co-writer/director Maggie Betts’s mind).
Financially troubled funeral home owner Jeremiah O’Keefe (Tommy Lee Jones) sues a much larger funeral home company, the Loewen Group, owned by Ray Loewen (Bill Camp). It’s a business and someone has to do it, but the fact remains that both these guys, the nice one and the mean one alike, make a living from other people’s misery; that right there is a red flag.
Jeremiah hires showboating personal injury lawyer Willie E. Gary (Jamie Foxx), who has never lost a case (but that’s because he only chases ambulances that he knows he can catch). Here’s another red flag: Willie knows fuck-all about contract law (which the trial is nominally about); on the other hand, he’s black, and “the case was filed down in Hinds County. That’s a three-to-one black/white ratio. That means there’s a 70% chance we’ll get a black judge, and if we do go to trial, likely a black jury as well.”
Although never explicitly stated, Jeremiah brings Willie in for no other reason than to turn the trial into a circus, and Willie is only too happy to oblige. From the get-go, the procedure becomes a popularity contest. Accordingly, Willie’s opening salvo is to have Jeremiah testify about the time when he, as mayor of Biloxi, “denied [the KKK] a permit to demonstrate.”
The inmates having taken over the asylum, Loewen’s attorney, Mame Downes (Jurnee Smollet), is left with the thankless task of playing the straight man in this travesty of justice. Force to play Willie’s game, she exposes Jeremiah’s best friend’s grandfather as a member of the aforementioned Klan.
All of this is ostensibly done to establish Jeremiah’s character or lack thereof; never mind that he’s not the one who’s on trial. Then again, Loewen is not on trial, either — at least not for the things based on which he’s ultimately ruled against. For example, Loewen’s yacht. That’s where Jeremiah and Loewen first met and reached the handshake agreement that Loewen would renege on later. That said, what bearing the yacht itself or how much it cost has on the trial, I haven’t the foggiest; for some indiscernible reason, though, Willie uses it as the final nail in Loewen’s coffin.
More importantly, Willie uncovers an unholy alliance between the Loewen Group and the National Baptist Convention (NBC): “the Loewen Group connected with some of the top leadership of the NBC … One of the largest single branches of the Black church … they made a proposal to the NBC, told ’em that if they could convince the Black church to endorse the Loewen Group as their death care provider of choice, then they’d turn some of its members into salesmen … and for every product they sold, they could keep the commission.”
This scheme is summed up as “the Loewen Group … just trying to find another way to exploit Black folks in their most vulnerable moments.” The two-fold irony, which the filmmakers somehow failed to pick up on (or simply chose to ignore), is that 1) “folks in their most vulnerable moments” is Jeremiah’s bread and butter too, only in a much smaller scale, and 2) Willie uses those same “poor black people” for his and Jeremiah’s own personal gain.
Cue the montage of surprise witnesses (each more surprising than the last?), detailing Loewen’s unscrupulous (but, as far as we can tell, not necessarily illegal) business tactics. That would be all well and good if only Willie were representing all the black folks that Loewen has allegedly screwed over in a class action suit against the Loewen Group (and the NBC, of course).
As it is, all that this proves is that Loewen is an asshole. Fortunately for Jeremiah, that’s enough for the jury to award him $500 million in damages. The end. Willie and Jeremiah live happily ever as bestest friends foreverest — and why not? It worked for Green Book.
What we have here is a two-hour courtroom drama that doesn’t have time for the appeal. The film’s tagline is “Never Settle,” and indeed there’s a scene in which Jeremiah derives great pleasure from rejecting Loewen’s best settlement offers once the latter has conceded defeat. Jeremiah’s rationale is that what Loewen’s offering isn’t “enough to put [Loewen] out of business.” Gee, vindictive much?
All things considered, it’s tough to feel bad for Jeremiah when he nevertheless has to settle for $175 million (the filmmakers conveniently bury the outcome of the appeal in the Where Are They Now? Epilogue), only $100 million more than Loewen’s original final offer and a lot less than $500 million, but still a shitload of fucking money.
90% of Everything is Crap 