Sommersby (1993)

Richard Gere is Jack Sommersby, a Confederate soldier who returns home to a warm welcome from everyone but wife Laurel (Jodie Foster).

She remembers a cold, unloving man, one who left for the war six years earlier and one from whom she hasn’t heard from since.

In fact, before Jack’s return, she was ready to move on with her life and marry Orin Meecham (Bill Pullman), a neighbor who has been helping her eek out a living on the plantation she was left to run.

But the Jack who returns from war is a more caring and loving man, a man she finds herself strangely drawn to.

He’s also invested in the welfare of his town, convincing its destitute residents there’s a future in growing tobacco where they used to grow cotton, then leading the effort to do just that.

Just as the crop is about be harvested, the law shows up looking for Jack Sommersby. He’s wanted on a murder charge.

But is the man who returned from war really Jack Sommersby?

There are some who doubt it. And some willing to prove he isn’t, including Orin Meecham.

And the true identity of the man on trial in Tennessee might mean the difference between life and death.

Richard Gere as a haggard Jack Sommersby, back home after six years in Sommersby (1993)

Jodie Foster as Laurel Somersby, accepting of a much-changed husband in Sommersby (1993)

Review:

An entertaining film, if you can get past the implausibility of an entire town — and especially a man’s wife — accepting the man who returns from war as someone he isn’t. That’s a big if.

In truth, Richard Gere’s character is a former school teacher who found himself in a Union prisoner of war camp with the real Jack Sommersby. He was a thief and a coward in his previous life, giving him motivation to want to start life anew when the real Jack Sommersby dies.

Fortunately, Gere and Foster display considerable on-screen chemistry. Fortunately, Bill Pullman turns in a fine performance as the man suddenly robbed of the life he hoped to live.

As for fourth-billed James Earl Jones, he doesn’t show up until the trial sequence at the end of the film. The outcome of that trial makes for good melodrama, but seems as implausible as the film’s original premise.

This film is a remake of the 1982 French film “The Return of Martin Guerre,” set 400 years earlier than this one.

Bill Pullman as Orin Meecham, the man who hoped to marry Laurel in Sommersby (1993)

Brett Kelley as Little Rob, Laurel Sommersby’s son in Sommersby (1993)

Director:
Jon Amiel

Cast:
Richard Gere … Jack Sommersby
Jodie Foster … Laurel Sommersby
Bill Pullman … Orin Meecham
James Earl Jones … Judge Issacs
Lanny Flaherty … Buck
William Windom … The Rev. Powell
Wendell Wellman … Travis
Brett Kelley … Little Rob
Clarice Taylor … Esther
Frankie Faison … Joseph
R. Lee Ermey … Dick Mead
Richard Hamilton … Doc Evans
Karen Kirschenbauer … Mr. Evans

Runtime: 114 min.

Richard Gere as Jack Sommersby and Jodie Foster as Laurel, getting reacquainted in Sommersby (1993)

James Earl Jones as Judge Issacs, the man presiding over Sommersby’s murder trial in Sommersby (1993)

Memorable lines:

Esther, a black servant, to Jack: “Everybody that ain’t dead is leavin’. This town’s finished Mr. Jack. Ain’t nothing left here but hard ground and nobody to work it.”

Townsman: “What you’d do in prison?”
Jack Sommersby: “Starved. Froze. Like everybody else.”

Jack Sommersby, on why he and Laurel married: “Couldn’t have been love, could it?”
Laurel: “Could’ve been. If you’d been the least little bit kinder.”

Jack Sommersby: “You’ve got a very beautiful smile, Mrs. Sommersby. Hope to see a whole lot more of it.”

Townsman: “Hey, Jack, you ever plant anything in a field, cept your foot up somebody else’s backside?”
Jack Sommersby: “No, I don’t think I have there, Buck. But I didn’t shoot my first man ’til I had to either.”

Frankie Faison as Joseph, the black sharecropper hoping to own land under Sommersby’s plan in Sommersby (1993)

Richard Gere as Jack Sommersby, the man who brings hope back to his wife and his town in Sommersby (1993)