The Spitfire Grill Movie Review

Alison Elliott may not be my first choice for Peter Gallagher's femme fatale in The Underneath, but she is THE best possible Percy Talbott in Lee David Zlotoff's The Spitfire Grill. Actually, there are three breathtaking performances here. Ellen Burstyn does a beautiful job as Hannah Ferguson, the owner of the Spitfire Grill, and Marcia Gay Harden turns the role of an unsophisticated small-town wife and mother inside out in her portrayal of Shelby Goddard. The weak link here is Will Patton as Shelby's mean husband Nathan. By playing the same cookie cutter villain in most of his films over the last 15 years, Patton has remained steadily employed. Except for the Maine “accent” he uses here, Nathan is basically the same bad guy you saw in No Way Out, without the subtle shading a John Mahoney or J.T. Walsh would give an ambiguous character. Fortunately, Patton's not in every other sequence here. Percy has just been released from prison on a manslaughter rap and Nathan has it in for her. She finds a home working at the Grill and soon becomes fast friends with Hannah and Shelby. She also wanders through the beautiful countryside that surrounds the town of Gilead and befriends a silent reclusive loner (John M. Jackson) she dubs Johnny B., after the song. Shelby then comes up with an idea to help Hannah; Shelby's for it, Nathan's against it, and a deliberately paced character study evolves into a full-fledged melodrama. The sterling work of Elliott, Burstyn, and Harding undoubtedly helped to make this one an Audience Award winner at 1996's Sundance Film Festival. AKA: Care of the Spitfire Grill.

1995 (PG-13) 117m/C Alison Elliott, Ellen Burstyn, Marcia Gay Harden, Will Patton, Kieran Mulroney, Gailard Sartain, Louise De Cormier, John M. Jackson; D: Lee David Zlotoff; W: Lee David Zlotoff; C: Rob Draper; M: James Horner. Sundance Film Festival ‘96: Audience Award. VHS, LV, Closed Caption