A Family Thing

Earl Pilcher Jr. has spent his whole life in Arkansas, running an equipment rental business and living a quiet, ordinary existence with his wife, children and parents. After his mother dies, she leaves behind a letter that overturns everything he believed about himself: she was not his birth mother, and his real mother was a Black woman who died giving birth to him. The letter also reveals that he has a half-brother named Ray, living in Chicago, and asks him to find him.

Earl makes the trip north, where Ray and Ray's son Virgil greet him with suspicion rather than warmth. It falls largely to Aunt T., the elderly blind matriarch of the family, to push the relatives toward accepting Earl. Robert Duvall plays Earl and James Earl Jones plays Ray, with Michael Beach, Irma P. Hall, Grace Zabriskie and Regina Taylor in supporting roles. Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson wrote the screenplay, and Richard Pearce directed, following The Long Walk Home and Leap of Faith in a career that began with Siege in 1978.

Released in March 1996, the film took in roughly 10 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a 7.1 rating from about 4,900 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.6 from a much smaller pool of 78 votes. A critics' rating of 6.2 from 22 reviews places it slightly below the audience score on IMDb.