REVIEW: Robert Duvall and Co. Make for Classy, Splendid Get Low

Best of all, though, Get Low allows us to revel in those faces. Murray is one of those performers who, especially in recent years, has blurred the line between being a comic actor and a dramatic one. His character in Get Low is a bit of a wheeler-dealer, though clearly not the most unscrupulous kind: He may bend the truth, but never to the breaking point. And as Murray plays him, Quinn is practical first and foremost. As he peruses a newspaper one day, he laments to Buddy, "People are dying in bunches. Everywhere -- but here," phrasing the observation with a kind of vaudevillian wryness.

And Murray, like his co-stars, has a face that looks lived-in. I've detected a strange, unspoken rule that critics are supposed to pretend they don't notice when an actor has had work done. For that reason, I'm always happy to take note of performers who, apparently, haven't. Murray's face is possibly more expressive now than ever: My favorite Murray expression is that faintly furrowed brow, a look that says, "Prove to me you're not an idiot." He wears that one a lot, to my delight, in Get Low.

Similarly, Spacek plays Mattie not as a faded old-timer, but as a woman for whom vitality is a state of mind -- her eyes have a flinty, flirtatious sparkle. At one point the camera catches Spacek in profile, and with her girlish, upturned nose, she's not so far removed from the fragile teenaged Carrie. It's a lovely moment, one that reminds us why we often feel loyal to actors who strive to give us something new and wonderful to watch, year in and year out.

Duvall is one of those actors, too, and he's superb here. That probably won't come as much of a surprise: Duvall, now 79, is among the best we've got. But as great as he's so often been, there's something wholly relaxed and unvarnished about his most recent performances (among them, his small but potent turn in last year's indie favorite Crazy Heart). He spends part of Get Low with much of his face obscured by that weedy facial hair; how is it, then, that that whiskery, half-hidden face tells us just about everything we need to know about this character, a man who's closed himself off to the world and yet yearns to find a way to be open?

Duvall's Felix Bush embodies every knotty contradictions of plain old living: Supposedly, the older we get, the wiser we get. But as Duvall plays him, Felix is a man coming to terms with the crushing reality (one that, unfortunately, every generation has to learn for itself) that the more we think we know, the less we actually do. With Duvall, you never see technique, but you always see a face. It's the best thing an actor can show the world; really, it's the only thing.

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