Billy Bob Thornton And Kevin Bacon Teamed Up For A Star-Studded Drama That's Streaming On Prime Video

Billy Bob Thornton never wanted to direct again after his big budget Western flop "All the Pretty Horses." Having written and directed 1996's "Sling Blade" (the Oscar-winning movie Thornton credits with changing his life), he went on to oversee the ill-fated Cormac McCarthy adaptation in 2000, which almost put an end to his directorial career. 2001's "Daddy and Them," which Thornton directed and fronted, was shot before "All the Pretty Horses," and it would take until 2012 for him to return to the director's chair. He did so with the comedy drama "Jayne Mansfield's Car." It wasn't quite a triumph, but it was received more favorably than "All the Pretty Horses." Luckily, you can decide for yourself whether Thornton's return to directing was worth the 12-year wait, as "Jayne Mansfield's Car" is currently streaming on Prime Video.

Thornton penned the screenplay along with Tom Epperson, with whom he'd previously co-written 1992's "One False Move," 1996's "A Family Thing" and "Don't Look Back," Sam Raimi's 2000 thriller "The Gift," and 2011's "Camouflage." "Jayne Mansfield's Car" marked their sixth collaboration, and, like almost all their films, it ventured into Southern Gothic territory. This time, Robert Duvall was front-and-center as a war veteran and patriarch of a 1960s Alabama family who are forced to confront the British family for whom their late wife/mother left them. Thornton, Kevin Bacon, and Robert Patrick play Duvall's sons in a film that both grapples with the effects of war on successive generations and revels in the clashing of two very different cultures. It wasn't a triumph, but it arguably deserved more attention than it got.

"Jayne Mansfield's Car" is set in 1969 Morrison, Alabama, where Robert Duvall's World War I veteran Jim Caldwell oversees a broken family. Billy Bob Thornton plays the eldest son, a World War II veteran and gearhead named Skip Caldwell, with Bacon playing his sibling Carroll, a veteran turned anti-war protestor. (Bacon, notably, portrayed the younger Caldwell brother just ahead of his debut as former FBI agent Ryan Hardy in Fox's "The Following," which became one of his best roles of the 2010s.) Lastly, Robert Patrick plays the third Caldwell brother — Jimbo, who never served and struggles with significant repressed anger — while Katherine LaNasa of "The Pitt" appears as Jim's daughter Donna Baron. 

Years earlier, Jim's ex-wife, Naomi Caldwell, left him and the family for England, where she met and married Kingsley Bedford (John Hurt), himself a WWI veteran. After Naomi passes away, Kingsley honors her wish to hold her funeral in Morrison and travels from London to the Southern town with his son Phillip (Ray Stevenson) and daughter Camilla (Frances O'Connor). There, the two families come face to face. But rather than clashing, Jim and Kingsley find themselves getting along, prompting some soul searching for Duvall's taciturn patriarch.

If you're wondering what any of that has to do with the titular starlet, at one point Duvall's character takes his British counterpart to a grim side show in a nearby town where Jayne Mansfield's wrecked car is on display. Don't worry, even Godfrey Cheshire of RogerEbert.com found this sidebar to be completely "random," especially since it inexplicably provided the title for Thornton's dark comedy drama. Still, while "Jayne Mansfield's Car" might not be one of Billy Bob Thornton's best movies, it certainly has its charms.

"Jayne Mansfield's Car" debuted at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival ahead of a limited theatrical run, but it failed to make much of an impression. A 33% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes doesn't do much to make up for that, but critics weren't quite as hard on Billy Bob Thornton's comedy drama as that score suggests.

Richard Brody of The New Yorker spotted what he described as "a terrific movie struggling to escape from this overplotted, overedited, overdetermined stew." But even he acknowledged Thornton's ability to "direct with a sure feeling for mood, texture, and place," praising the "potent time-capsule-like authority" of the characters' voices and gestures, which he felt gave the film "a deep, lived-in resonance" — not bad for what RT interpreted as a negative review. Likewise, in his review for RogerEbert.com Godfrey Cheshire seemed mostly underwhelmed while also noting that Robert Duvall and John Hurt's pairing "may be the one thing that guarantees 'Jayne Mansfield's Car' a place in the history books."

Of course, you can decide for yourself whether the film does indeed deserve such a place. "Jayne Mansfield's Car" is streaming on Prime Video at no extra cost to subscribers, and it's worth checking out, especially if you've developed a new appreciation for Thornton's talents after watching the similarly father-and-son- focused "Landman." Regrettably, Thornton has basically stepped away from directing since "Jayne Mansfield's Car," so, at the very least, it's worth checking out what may very well be the actor's final directorial effort.