Ulee’s Gold (1997)
By Anne Waisanen
Peter Fonda stars as Ulee, which is short for Ulysses Jackson, a beekeeper in the Florida panhandle who was the only survivor of his Vietnam unit. His wife died six years ago. His son is in prison on a robbery charge, and he’s rasing his two granddaughters Penny (Vanessa Zima) and Casey (Jessica Biel). Ulee escaped one war only to find himself in another, against an intangible enemy: everything that's working to take his family from him He hasn't spoken to his son Jimmy (Tom Wood) in two years, when one day a call comes. He goes to visit him in prison. The son asks for help for his wife Helen (Christine Dunford). Ulee drives his pickup truck down to where Ferris and Eddie (Dewey Weber and Steven Flynn) are holed up in a flophouse with Helen, who is strung out on drugs and madness. And he hauls Helen home, although not before the two men tell him they believe Jimmy hid $100,000 from the robbery, and they want it back – or they’ll come after the grandchildren.
A woman named Connie (Patricia Richardson, from TV's Home Improvement) lives across the street from Ulee. She's a nurse, divorced twice, with no children. The granddaughters like her, and when they see the shape their mother is in, they drag her across the street to help. Helen needs a lot of help. Sedatives, restraints, the whole detox process. Ulee tries to thank Connie. “It's what I do,'' she says.
The elements are in place for a fairly standard story in which Ferris and Eddie come looking for the money, and Ulee must defend his family, while falling in love, of course, with Connie – while the girls bond once again with their mother. But to look at events in that way would miss the whole purpose of Ulee's Gold, which is not about who prevails, but about what Ulee learns about himself.
The movie was written, directed and edited by Victor Nunez, a native Floridian (born in Deland), who bases all his films in Florida.
The film was mostly set in Florida’s Panhandle with scenes shot in Port St Joe, Apalachicola, Carrabelle, Wewahitchka and the Gulf County correctional facility. Other scenes were shot in and around Orlando.
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