Secondhand Lions
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| Secondhand Lions | |
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 Secondhand Lions film poster |
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| Directed by | Tim McCanlies |
| Produced by | Corey Sienega Scott Ross Amy Sayres David Kirschner |
| Written by | Tim McCanlies |
| Starring | Haley Joel Osment Robert Duvall Michael Caine Kyra Sedgwick Josh Lucas Jake Hay David Johnson |
| Music by | Patrick Doyle |
| Cinematography | Jack N. Green |
| Editing by | David Moritz |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
| Release date(s) | September 19, 2003 |
| Language | English |
Secondhand Lions is a 2003 American adventure/comedy film about a young boy who is sent to live with his two eccentric but mysterious great-uncles on a farm in Texas. The movie was filmed in Lockhart, Texas.
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[edit] Synopsis
Walter (Haley Joel Osment) is sent to live with his uncles by his mother (who claims she is going to go to court reporting school), so that he can find the fortune they have supposedly accumulated. When they first arrive, Hub and Garth McCann (Robert Duvall, Michael Caine) are knee-deep in their pond, shooting at catfish with shotguns. His cousins, also strong believers in the fortune, arrive a day after his mother leaves to ingratiate themselves into the good graces of Hub and Garth. They scare Walter away, and he runs to telephone his mother. He discovers that she is not actually enrolled at the school, but has lied -again.
With no recourse but to return to his uncles' farm, Walter eventually becomes used to their quirky, socially atypical mannerisms and they become used to him and his shyness. While encouraging them to eat vegetables and stop shooting at visiting salesmen, he becomes aware of his uncles' mysterious past. Garth reveals to him that he and Hub were adventurers beginning in World War I.
Hub and Garth arrived in France the day that Germany invaded the country. Garth believed they should return home, but Hub proposed that they tour Europe just ahead of the invading armies. After a night of drinking and carousing in Marseilles, they found themselves on board a ship, conscripted into the French Foreign Legion. The two brothers fought in many battles, and Hub saved Garth's life several times.
Following their Legion service, Garth became a guide in Africa, while Hub helped anybody who deserved it. Hub became mutually attracted to Jasmine, a beautiful woman and an expert horsewoman, who decided to meet him after he rescued her servant from slavery. She, however, was doomed to be an evil sheik's wife. Hub rescued Jasmine from the sheik, who then put a price of ten thousand gold pieces on Hub's head. Garth, disguised as a bounty hunter, turned in Hub for the reward, whereupon Hub escaped, having won a duel's victory from the sheik. Hub's parting words to the sheikh were "Twice I've held your life in my hands, and twice I have given it back to you; the next time, your life is mine." He earned the other man's respect and a great deal of his gold. Later, the sheikh made his fortune in trade of rock oil.
Meanwhile, Hub, Garth and Walter have adventures of their own. They order an aging lioness (from a Circus animal dealer), whom Walter adopts and names Jasmine, thereby keeping Hub from killing her. Hub and Garth frighten off Walter's cousins and purchase a clay pigeon thrower, a succession of ever-larger boats, and a biplane. Hub gets into a fight with several ruffians within an hour after having a heart attack, wins the fight, and gives them a lecture on what it means to be a real man. Part of the lecture is shown below:
"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."
Walter subsequently finds that his uncles have been hiding their money in a room beneath their barn.
Fresh from Las Vegas (where she had been instead of at the school), Walter's mother and her current suitor, a grifter calling himself a "detective", arrive at the farm and demand to know where the money is. The suitor tells Walter that Hub and Garth actually were bank robbers, that Jasmine was their accomplice, and the fortune is for the taking. Walter decides he will believe in the tales of his uncles, and the man begins to beat Walter. Jasmine (the lion) attacks the false detective and seriously wounds him, and although the lioness dies of a heart attack in the process, she arouses enough noise to attract the attention of Hub and Garth. Walter holds Jasmine's head in his lap and says, "She was a real lion, wasn't she? There at the end. A real jungle lion. A real Africa lion," and smiles knowingly at his uncles, his way of saying he believes in the stories of Africa.
Walter is taken away by his mother, but he decides to return to his uncles' house after she informs him she has no intention of leaving the man who nearly beat her son unconscious. He lays certain conditions on Hub and Garth: that they eat more vegetables and stop their dangerous pastimes until Walter graduates from college. Hub replies, "What do you want us to die of... old age?"
Several years later, Walter (now a successful cartoonist, his Bloom County-like strip based on his childhood experiences with his uncles) comes back to discover that his uncles have flown their biplane into their barn and died. The Sheriff who informs Walter of his uncles demise passes their will to Walter.
While Walter reads the will ("The kid gets it all. Just plant us in the damned garden with the stupid lion.") and laughs to himself about his uncles' unique approach to life, a helicopter touches down and a Middle Eastern man steps out. He explains that, while in Texas tending to his oil interests, he saw news of the men's deaths and their names on CNN and thought they might be the two courageous Americans that his grandfather (the sheik) had told him about long ago. Walter says that, yes, they were, and the two are happy to realize that the stories which had inspired them for so long were true-- that the two men "really lived".
[edit] Takeaway
During one of the more inspiring points in the movie, Hub gives Walter a portion of his famous 'becoming a man' speech, a speech that gets at the heart of the movie's virtuous lessons: "Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most: that people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; that love, true love, never dies... No matter if they're true or not, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in."
[edit] Trivia
- Actor Michael Caine had to imitate a Texan accent for the film, which he relates to having all the words "lean on each other."
- The cartoons drawn by Walter are actually drawn by Berkeley Breathed, best known for his comic strip Bloom County.
- In an alternate ending to the movie, instead of the sheik's grandson, a tractor-trailer pulls up at the gravesite and a detachment from the French Foreign Legion rides out on horseback and act as an Honor Guard. Shortly thereafter, the sheik himself, now wheelchair-bound and elderly, arrives in a limousine surrounded by his harem to pay his respects. The four ruffians that Hub beat up also make an appearance at the funeral, showing that Hub's speech did have an impact, as the men are now mature and respectable.
- At the end of the movie, the helicopter carrying the sheik's grandson says "Western Sahara Petroleum" on the side. Western Sahara is in fact a disputed province in northwest Africa, with no functioning petroleum industry to date.
- Haley Joel Osment was attacked by the pig during filming. The lioness had numerous handlers and trainers, yet no one considered pig as a menace.
- Travis Willingham, who played one of the hoodlums Hub beats up, has told fans that Robert Duvall threw real punches. Duvall mistook Willingham for a stuntman and didn't fake the blows, actually bloodying Travis' nose; this was the take used for the movie.
