I recommend THE BURIAL which I viewed on Amazon Prime with Jamie Foxx as Willie E. Gary and Tommy Lee Jones as Jeremiah O'Keefe. This is a David vs Goliath law case litigated in a small Mississippi courtroom; a true story made into a film based on a 1999 New Yorker article by Jonathan Harr about the Loewen-O'Keefe trial exposing the exploitation of poor and black people by a billionaire Corporation.
This is a powerful film as evidenced in one scene of a group of people viewing a vast, flat expanse of green with no headstones - a burial ground of slaves. This plot of land references the historical roots of racism and how time piles up one injustice over another so that the original 'sins" are buried so deep they are forgotten.
The two lead actors are both passionate fighters for what they believe in. Watching Jamie Foxx with incredible charisma as a small-time, hotshot personal injury lawyer stepping out of his comfort zone to defend a funeral home director who decides to sue a company that is attempting to decimate his family's legacy made me forget the world falling apart around us.
Tommy Lee Jones also gives a terrific performance, using his body to express the feeling of defeat, shoulders slumped with a gait that is no longer straight but unsteady. THE BURIAL is filled with sentimentality which felt appropriate in the beauty of the relationship between Jones and Foxx - opposites but both respecting each other's values.
I particularly want to mention a young actor, Mamoudou Athie, a quiet and commanding presence as Hal Dockins who O'Keefe hires just out of law school and is a catalyst for much of the film's legal maneuvering.
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