The Great Santini

Bull Meechum (Robert Duvall) loves fighting almost as much as he loves the Marine Corps. Profane, cocky, and arrogant, he's a great fighter pilot -- and he knows it. His boss hates his guts, but knows that if he's going to straighten out his lagging squadron, Meechum is the man to do it. The story and irony of The Great Santini is in Meechum's total intolerance of family life and fatherhood. Meechum has a lovely, supportive wife, Lillian (Blythe Danner), an earnest, likeable son, Ben (Michael O'Keefe), three smaller children, and a good home, but Meechum finds the pastoral nature of peacetime totally incompatible with his gung-ho nature. So he begins to drink. He drills his family unmercifully, like recruits. He hammers his son relentlessly until, in a basketball game, his son fights back, and the family cheers Ben's efforts. Tension builds in the household until, during one drunken night, Meechum breaks down. Slowly, he adapts to peacetime, but as he finally seems to have mellowed, his plane crashes in a storm and he dies. His family weeps at his loss, always having known that beneath the turbulent vapors of his personality was a man who loved them dearly. Based on a best-selling novel by Pat Conroy (who is from the Lowcountry area), The Great Santini earned critical raves and Duvall's performance as Meechum is generally regarded as one of his greatest. Click Here To Return To Previous Page