Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Seven Days in Utopia Blu-ray Movie Review

Different Strokes

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 14, 2012

It is entirely possible to enjoy watching Seven Days in Utopia without sharing the strong Christian faith that is one of its three essential elements, or even agreeing with the self-help philosophy that is a second. The third element is golf, and the participation of numerous pro golfers, plus the fact that star Lucas Black is an avid golfer and the golfing scenes are set in gorgeous surroundings, suggests that duffers of all persuasions should be able to enjoy the film for its depiction of a sport that is well-known for both frustrations and rewards. I'm not qualified to judge the authenticity of the golf scenes, but I take it on faith, if you'll pardon the expression, that they're accurate.

If golf isn't enough, there's always the pleasure of the irreplaceable Robert Duvall giving a deceptively simple performance as Johnny Crawford, a retired golfer in his twilight years, filled with wisdom and regret, who sees something of his younger self in Black's Luke Chisholm and has the chance to tell Luke what he wishes he'd learned sooner. Duvall won his Oscar for playing a worn-out country singer surveying his life's mistakes in Tender Mercies (1997); he was nominated again for his searing performance as a born-again minister struggling with God in The Apostle (1997), which he also directed. Add westerns like Lonesome Dove and Open Range, and the various colors of Johnny Crawford come as easily to Duvall as sitting in the saddle.

The novel on which the film was based was more overtly didactic and purposeful, in large part because the author, David L. Cook, is a sports psychologist and a man on a mission. As readers' comments at Amazon suggest, Cook's overt agenda limited his audience as an author to those who already share his beliefs. Cook was an executive producer of the film and a co-author of the script, but director Matt Russell, who shares writing credit (along with Sandra Thrift), cut his cinematic teeth in the world of visual effects. Russell understands the importance of the storytelling commandment to "show, don't tell". In Russell's hands, Seven Days in Utopia remains a G-rated "message" movie, but it proceeds in a skillfully constructed manner that allows even viewers who don't necessarily share the beliefs that inspired it to enjoy this family- friendly tale.

Luke Chisholm (Ezra Proch as a child; Black as an adult) is a promising young golfer trained by his father, Martin (Joseph Lyle Taylor), to be a champion. It's a fraught relationship, with Martin's love and approval based entirely on how Luke performs on the links. During Luke's first major tournament, father and son disagree over how to hit a particular shot. When Martin insists it be done his way, the results are bad, and Martin walks off the course. Luke suffers an epic meltdown that every sports network plays on a perpetual loop.

Luke drives out aimlessly onto the back roads of Texas, angry and haunted by childhood memories. He doesn't stop until he swerves to avoid a steer in the road and plows through a fence, wrecking his car and banging his head in the process. Luke has ended up on the property of Johnny Crawford (Duvall) in the town of Utopia (which really exists). Johnny finds him dejected next to the wreckage and brings him to town, where Lily (Melissa Leo), whom Johnny treats as a sister, runs a café and has a first aid kit.

Luke's seven-day stay in Utopia results from the length of time it takes to fix his car. During that week, Luke resides at the motel run by Mabel (Kathy Baker), which Johnny owns, as he seems to own much of the town, and he gets an eccentric education from Johnny comparable to the one that Mr. Miyagi gave to the Karate Kid. Johnny even has his own quotable slogan, though not quite as memorable as "wax on, wax off". Johnny's is "SFT", which stands for "see it, feel it, trust it". His training techniques include painting pictures of trees, pitching washers, flying an airplane and using a new style of putter, but everything Johnny tells Luke to do is about looking forward. Mr. Miyagi would have called it "balance".

Johnny is obviously too good to be true, an idealized vision of the perfect mentor, but Duvall lends him enough substance to keep the story grounded. As Johnny leads Luke through various exercises and shares perspectives from a life on the pro golf circuit filled with highs and lows, hard drinking and a failed marriage, Duvall creates a persuasive portrait of someone who's earned the right to be a mentor by accepting the consequences of his own mistakes. Thanks to Duvall, both Johnny and the film are more credible than they have any right to be.

Johnny isn't the only source of inspiration for Luke in Utopia. There's also the countryside itself, one of those perfect locales where nature still seems to exist in harmony with people and the landscape routinely presents gorgeous vistas as a reminder that the world is a good place. The town has everything a person could ever want, according to Lily's daughter, Sarah (Deborah Ann Woll, still quite fetching without her True Blood fangs). Luke and Sarah don't progress very far romantically (she tells him to wait, and he obeys), but the feelings are obviously strong, and Luke will surely return to Utopia.

Some viewers may balk at the scene in which Luke joins Johnny and the rest of the town's inhabitants in church just before leaving Utopia, but to me it felt like the natural way for Luke to "graduate" into full citizenship. The importance to the town of the small church and its gleaming spire has been established early on. The greater strain on credulity is the miraculous reconciliation with his father Martin after Luke returns home a new man. Long-term family dysfunction can't be cleared up overnight, even if (and it's a big "if") both parties have suddenly seen the light; years of bad habits and accumulated scar tissue can't be shed so easily.

The film's finale is Luke's comeback at the Texas open, where all eyes (and cameras) are watching the rookie who fell apart just a few weeks earlier. Golf afficionados will enjoy the presence of celebrities like KJ Choi (here called "T.K. Oh"), Rickie Fowler, Stewart Cink and Rich Beem. Sports film enthusiasts looking for the satisfaction of a "big game" finish may be disappointed (and no, I didn't just tell you the outcome).

Seven Days in Utopia Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Seven Days in Utopia was shot by M. David Mullen, the favorite cinematographer of the Polish Brothers (Twin Falls Idaho and Northfork), as well as the creator of the various styles behind NBC's new series Smash and HBO's The United States of Tara. Mullen's work for Utopia is so gorgeously sharp and detailed that you'd almost swear he used digital cameras, but the credits make clear that this was a production on film (3-perf Super 35, according to IMDb), finished on a digital intermediate. Director Russell clearly hired Mullen to make Utopia (both the town and the film) as beautiful as possible, and Mullen obliged.

The image on ARC Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray lovingly reproduces the golds, greens and browns of the Texas landscape in all their glory. Rarely have scrub brush and pasture land looked so inviting. Detail and depth of field are remarkable, whether looking at golf courses or distant landscapes or studying the lifetime of memorabilia accumulated in Johnny's office. In night sequences, when the golden sunlight is absent, the black levels show appropriate gradations of darkness without crushing.

Grain is barely detectable, which seems to be more and more the norm on projects completed on a digital intermediate. Certainly there are no signs of high frequency filtering, and no artificial sharpening has been applied to create the impression of additional detail. No compression artifacts were observed.

Seven Days in Utopia Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The most noticeable effect on the DTS-HD MA 5.1 track is a deep bass rumbling that is pervasive during the film's first 15 minutes (Luke Chisholm's most troubled time) and doesn't seem especially attached to any particular effect or music cue. Maybe it's intended to convey the turmoil in Luke's troubled spirit, but it's certainly unsettling. As for the rest, the track contains a few standard-issue surround effects involving vehicles passing and ambient environmental noises, as well as clear dialogue and an effective score by Klaus Badelt (the first Pirates of the Caribbean) and Christopher Carmichael.

Seven Days in Utopia Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Featurettes (HD, 1080p, 2.35:1): Though billed as "featurettes", these are really short promo spots focusing on different aspects of the film.
• Beyond the Game (1:45): On the larger issues of life explored through the metaphor of golf.
• PGA Certified (1:50): On the film's authentic depiction of golf.
• Who's Your Johnny (2:08): Author Cook on the inspiration for Johnny, and actors and golfers on the importance of mentors.


• Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for The Way, Snowmen and The Greening of Whitney Brown. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Seven Days in Utopia Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

When a film arrives with a prominent endorsement from Focus on the Family, there's a natural tendency to assume its appeal will be limited to an evangelical audience. Some such assumption seems to have infected the critical response when Seven Days in Utopia was in theaters. A "Christian propaganda fantasy movie" went one pithy dismissal quoted at Rotten Tomatoes, though the degree to which religion, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder is revealed by the critic who saw the film's version of golf as a metaphor for, of all things, Buddhism (and not without justification). But unless you have an agenda—and it's hard to take a step in any direction without tripping over one these days—Seven Days in Utopia isn't out to convert anyone. Working within G-rated limits, director Russell crafted a tale about specific people in a particular time and place. Their faith is part of who they are, and one can enjoy their story without sharing that faith, just as one can enjoy it without being a golfer like Luke and Johnny, running a café like Lily or a hotel like Mabel, or studying animal husbandry like Sarah. Recommended for duffers, Duvall fans and general family viewing.