Synopsis
Sully is a rascally ne'er-do-well approaching retirement age. While he is pressing a worker's compensation suit for a bad knee, he secretly works for his nemesis, Carl, and flirts with Carl's young wife Toby. Sully's long- forgotten son and family have moved back to town, so Sully faces unfamiliar family responsibilities. Meanwhile, Sully's landlady's banker son plots to push through a new development and evict Sully from his mother's life.
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Cast
- Paul NewmanSully Sullivan
- Bruce WillisCarl Roebuck
- Melanie GriffithToby Roebuck
- Jessica TandyBeryl Peoples
- Dylan WalshPeter Sullivan
- Pruitt Taylor VinceRub Squeers
- Gene SaksWirf Wirfley
- Josef SommerClive Peoples Jr.
- Philip Seymour HoffmanOfficer Raymer
- Philip BoscoJudge Flatt
Recommendations
- 100
San Francisco Chronicle
Nobody's Fool functions mostly as a character study, but it's also Benton's elegy to America's endangered small towns. It's a gem. - 100
The Seattle Times
In Benton's able hands this authentic, engagingly humane movie evolves into a casual treasure of stolen moments, where nothing much happens and yet everything happens. Because Benton knows that life can best be found in a silent expression, a camouflaged turn of a phrase, and in the simple acts of compassion that make the next day worth waking up for. - 91
Entertainment Weekly
Nobody’s Fool shines with intelligence and grace and the natural light of fine moviemaking. Like a shot of superior whiskey, it’s a sharp comfort in the grayness of winter - 90
The New York Times
If Nobody's Fool is often heartbreaking in its sense of loss, it is also hopeful in the strength of its emotions and the sheer beauty of its performances. - 88
Chicago Sun-Times
The story, written by Benton from the novel by Richard Russo, unfolds according to its own logic. It has the patience to listen to silences. Above all, it benefits from the confidence of Newman's performance. He is not hammering the points home, not marching from one big scene to another, but simply living on the screen. - 88
ReelViews
Nobody's Fool is about as sublime a motion picture as is likely to come out of Hollywood. With a structure that contravenes the norm, this film concentrates on character first, letting the plot fall naturally into place. Situations are forced on neither the film's inhabitants nor on those in the audience. - 83
Christian Science Monitor
Nobody's Fool centers on a hard-luck guy named Sullivan, played by Newman with a wisdom and panache that recall the best work of his career. - 80
Variety
Nobody's Fool is a gentle, flavorsome story of a loose-knit, dysfunctional family whose members essentially include every glimpsed citizen of a small New York town. Fronted by a splendid performance from Paul Newman as a spirited man who has made nothing of his life, Robert Benton's character-driven film is sprinkled with small pleasures; the dramatic developments here don't take place in the noisy, calamitous manner that is customary these days.
