AROUND THE BEND
Year: 2004
USA: Warner Independent Pictures
UK: Warner Bros
Cast: Michael Caine, Christopher Walken, Josh Lucas, Jonah Bobo, Glenne Headly, Kathryn Hahn, David Eigenberg, Robert Douglas, Carlos Cabarcas, Gerry Bamman, Jean Effron, Lily Knight, Rick Negron, David Marciano, Norbert Weisser, Laurie O'brien, Michael O'Neill
Director: Jordan Roberts
Country: USA
USA: 85 mins
USA: 83 mins
USA Rated: R language
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong language and brief horror
USA Release Date: 8 October 2004 (Limited Release)
UK Release Date: 22 April 2005 (Limited Release - London)
Synopsis
AROUND THE BEND is inspired by the relationship between writer-director Jordan Roberts and the absentee father he barely knew. It tells the story of four generations of men who are suddenly brought together by the chance to uncover the truth about their family's past. The journey will take them out on the road to a world full of surprises—some comic, some dramatic, and all of them personal.
Jason Lair (Josh Lucas) is a simple man with a simple wish: a normal life. This isn't an easy goal for the mild-mannered bank employee: Jason is newly separated from his wife, who has left him to care for their six year-old son Zach (Jonah Bobo) while she paints in Nepal, and his ailing grandfather Henry (Oscar® winner Michael Caine), a former archaeologist close to death, is investigating alternative rituals for his impending funeral ("I'm not going in the ground!" he protests.) So when Jason's estranged father and Henry's son Turner (Oscar® winner Christopher Walken), whose checkered past includes exploits from the musical to the criminal, pays the family an unexpected visit, nothing is 'simple' or 'normal' in Jason's life anymore.
In the coming days, the somewhat reluctant Lair men will embark on a trip not only through the mythic beauty of the Desert Southwest, but across the family's own rocky emotional landscape. Forced together by a deep loss, these very different people find a great deal along the way—devastating secrets, amazing discoveries and, just as Henry wanted... each other.