Review: Jamie Foxx and Tommy lee Jones shine in The Burial on Prime Video

M, 126 minutes, Prime Video

4 stars

We didn't know it, but Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx are the duo we've been waiting for.

Both are supremely talented actors with Oscars to their names - Jones for The Fugitive and Foxx for Ray - and in The Burial, they command your attention in very different ways.

Jones is all weathered, beleaguered gravitas, a frustrated everyman who wants what's fair and nothing more, while Foxx is flashy, mouthy, smooth and utterly compelling, always going for bigger, better, more.

Together, they're electric.

The Burial, based on a true story, follows Jones' Jerry O'Keefe, who owns several funeral homes and insurance businesses in his corner of Mississippi, as he takes the Canadian Loewen Group to court for failing to come through on their agreement to buy part of his business.

The Loewen group, led by a smarmy Bill Camp (The Night Of) as the billionaire owner Ray Loewen, is the largest funeral business in Canada, and has been steadily creeping into the US. Jerry's new young lawyer Hal (an excellent Mamoudou Athie, who recently voiced Wade in Elemental) believes they're deliberately taking their time in signing on the dotted line - despite agreeing to the purchase and Jerry's condition not to sell insurance in his region - in order to force the smaller business into bankruptcy and then buy it at a steal.

So Jerry and Hal head to Florida to meet with a lawyer who has a 100 per cent success rate - Foxx's Willie Gary. We see him arguing for one of his personal injury clients - telling the jury flat-out that his client is plenty unlikeable, but they've got the law on their side. He's a preacher and the jury are his congregation. But Willie has some reservations when he meets Hal - firstly, he's never worked with a white client before, and his dispute is contract law, not personal injury, which falls outside of Willie's specialty.

But Hal has the secret to get him onside - this case will make him famous. This case will make him as big as Johnnie Cochran (OJ Simpson's lawyer).

Now convinced, Willie brings his team of lawyers up to Mississippi to join forces with the rest of Jerry's legal team, led by Alan Ruck's Mike Allred. To say there is a culture clash is an understatement - one that deepens once Mike takes the stand as a witness to the deal.

As immensely watchable as Jones and Foxx are, they aren't the only performers who command your attention - Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country) is a vision as the opposing counsel.

Smollett has somehow gone relatively unheralded in her long career (which began as a child actress, appearing in the likes of Jack and TV's Full House), but she is a force in The Burial. The court case only really kicks off about halfway in, and that's where Smollett gets to shine. She's particularly great at cross-examining the witnesses, something fans of court room dramas always enjoy.

It's impossible to watch a film like this and not think of the likes of A Few Good Men, My Cousin Vinny and The Judge. All are excellent movies, and this slips nicely into the same conversation. The build-up in The Burial to the moment we get Ray Loewen on the stand is not too dissimilar to Colonel Jessup finally taking the stand in A Few Good Men. Both are men who think the rules don't apply to them, though Camp could never hope to match Nicholson's righteous indignation.

As much as this is a story about a dispute between two funeral business owners, it's also deeper than that, and race actually plays quite a large role.

The Burial is a highly enjoyable film, maintaining a light-hearted edge and brimming with charisma, largely led by Foxx.