Review

Jones and Duvall deliver subtle, finely drawn characterizations as half-brothers who are reunited after a separation of many decades, hundreds of miles, and the chasm of American racial relationships. Raised as white in a small Arkansas town, Duvall receives a posthumous letter from his mother informing him that in fact his birth mother was a black woman who worked for the family and who died at his birth. In unacknowledged, tightly controlled emotional upheaval and within shouting distance of old age, he embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery, traveling to Chicago to find his brother and his history. The script, wonderfully understated and studded with wry, poignant glimpses at human foibles, was cowritten by Billy Bob Thornton. The supporting cast is uniformly competent, with Hall in a standout performance as Aunt T., the family's backbone and historian. A Family Thing is a small gem of surprising emotional impact, a story of ordinary people which encapsulates larger issues in a personal framework.