Lou Lumenick

Lou Lumenick

Movies

‘Jayne Mansfield’s Car’ a wreck

The doomed Hollywood sex bomb does not appear in Billy Bob Thornton’s first film as a director since the unfortunate “All the Pretty Horses” 13 years ago. But the wreck of the convertible Jayne Mansfield was riding in at the time of her fatal accident does turn up as a carnival attraction halfway through.

Car crashes are an obsession of Robert Duvall’s Alabama patriarch in 1969 in this overlong, star-laden movie — a none-too-subtle metaphor for a life whose collateral damage includes three unhappy adult sons played by Kevin Bacon, Thornton and Robert Patrick. All are World War II veterans, but former POW Bacon is first seen while protesting the Vietnam War, much to Dad’s annoyance.

The more conservative Patrick — who never saw wartime action — is put out that the old man has invited their late mother’s husband of 20 years (John Hurt) to stay with them, along with Hurt’s kids from a previous marriage. They’re bringing the mother’s body home for burial in her hometown.

Any movie that brings together such formidable screen presences as Duvall and Hurt can’t be a total loss, and Thornton gives himself a nice scene where his character discusses his own horrific war experiences with Hurt’s daughter (Frances O’Connor). But overall, the rambling “Jayne Mansfield’s Car” is almost as big a wreck as its namesake.