Craig T. Nelson is an extremely fine and too often underappreciated actor, and it’s difficult not to be at least mildly impressed by his absolutely fearless lead performance in “Green and Gold.” In director Anders Lindwall’s ponderous and predictable drama, he plays Buck, a debt-ridden Wisconsin dairy farmer who’s way too proud and tradition-bound to change his ways, and ultimately so desperate that he literally agrees to bet the farm in order to save it. To put it bluntly, Nelson gives this clichéd indie a lot more than it ever gives him.
Hank is not always an easy man to like, and it’s obvious that neither Nelson nor Lindwall wants to make him any more likable than he has to be. Lean and leathery, with a stoic grimace as his facial expression of choice, Hank is a salt-of-the-earth guy who loves Margaret (Annabel Armour), his supportive and infinitely patient wife of several years, and Jenny (Madison Lawlor), his musically inclined granddaughter, only slightly less than his beloved Green Bay Packers. But that doesn’t mean he’s willing to listen to them or anyone else when it comes to updating his low-tech equipment — he appears to relish using a horse-drawn plow instead of a tractor — or changing much of anything else about his life and work.
Unfortunately, Hank’s stubborn maintenance of his status quo has resulted in his accruing an ever-growing sea of red ink. He’s on the verge of having his farm foreclosed upon by an unsympathetic banker who harshly observes — not without cause — that Hank “farms like it’s the 1800s,” even though the movie is set in the mid-1990s. But Hank vows to soldier on, and insists that Jenny indefinitely delay, if not entirely extinguish, her dreams of putting rural life behind her and becoming a successful singer-songwriter. Dreams, not surprisingly, that Hank takes every opportunity to discourage.
Very little of what happens in “Green and Gold” can accurately be described as surprising. Ever hear of the Law of Chekhov’s Gun? Well, Lindwall, working from an uninspired script he co-wrote with Steven Shafer, Michael Graf and Missy Mareau Garcia, relies on what could be called the Law of Chekhov’s Ladder, introducing and emphasizing a certain item so heavy-handedly that you instinctively grasp that, sooner or later, someone is bound to have a nasty accident while using it.
And then there’s the change of heart (and recalibration of loyalty) exhibited by Jenny, who spends the first half of the movie unshakably determined to make her dreams come true, and is fueled by her ambition to overcome her inhibitions in order to seek career advice from Billy (Brandon Sklenar of “1923” and “It Ends with Us”), a chart-topping singer who just happens to be staying at a nearby farm, seeking inspiration from “natural elements” as he works on his next album.
Sklenar — who, as any reasonably sentient person can tell, is on the threshold of becoming a ginormous star — skillfully clouds Billy’s motives so you’re never entirely sure if he’s impressed by Jenny’s talent or physically attracted to her (or both). In the end, it feels like their relationship exists only to illustrate that Jenny is very much her grandfather’s granddaughter, and is equally capable of inflexible stubbornness.
“Green and Gold” plays like a cross between a by-the-numbers Hallmark Movie and the sort of suffocatingly sincere save-the-farm dramas that were film festival staples three or four decades ago. Some modest suspense is generated by the last-chance wager Hank makes with the banker — if the Green Bay Packers win the Super Bowl, foreclosure on the farm will be delayed interest-free for a year — and neatly avoids insulting our intelligence by taking the easy way out (in this area, at least). And there’s no gainsaying that Lindwall and his collaborators have a sharp eye and an uncondescending approach while conveying day-to-day details and attitudes common to rural American communities.
But by the time we get to the aggressively and shamelessly uplifting ending, which suggests a channel surf between the finales of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Field of Dreams,” “Green and Gold” collapses under the weight of its clichés and contrivances. You can’t help thinking that if Hank were watching all of this on TV, he’d mutter something unpleasant, then change the channel.
