“The Good Lie’’ is far from the Reese Witherspoon vehicle the ads and trailers promise, but I’m inclined to accept this whopper as a necessary evil to sell audiences this bighearted drama about refugees from Sudan’s bloody civil war trying to find their way in America.
There’s not even a fleeting glimpse of the Oscar winner in the harrowing first half-hour of the film, which mostly follows a half-dozen homeless children fleeing 800 miles on foot while being pursued by rebel soldiers and facing starvation in 1987. They finally make it to a refugee camp in Kenya, where in early 2001 the four who are left grow into adults and finally find sponsors in the United States.
A brunette Witherspoon is a redneck-ish employment counselor forced by circumstances to reluctantly pick up three of them at the airport in Kansas City, Mo., and take them to modest housing provided by their church charity sponsors. She has a much tougher time placing them in the jobs they need to stay in the country, even in booming pre-recession America.
Two of the Sudanese — played by actual refugees — go to work at a supermarket: the group’s leader, Mamere (Arnold Oceng, a real natural), who worked as a paramedic in the refugee camp and wants to go to medical school; and the deeply devout Jeremiah (Ger Duany), who is anguished when ordered to trash outdated produce that could feed the needy.
Paul (Emmanuel Jal) has a way with mechanical devices that makes him a natural at a company manufacturing plumbing supplies, but he starts drifting away from his mates after a pair of co-workers turn him on to pot.
French-Canadian director Philippe Falardeau (Oscar nominated for “Monsieur Lazhar’’) and screenwriter Margaret Nagle devote many Witherspoon-free scenes to the refugees adjusting to America — from the comic (they’ve never encountered a telephone) to the bureaucracy that blocks Mamere’s every effort to reunite the trio with his sister Abital (Kuoth Wiel), stranded with a family in Boston because of immigration rules.
This is where Witherspoon, who has developed an affection for the Sudanese trio, re-enters the picture. With the help of her wealthy boss (Corey Stoll), she cuts through the considerable red tape imposed after 9/11 to bring Abital to St. Louis. But it’s Mamere who will have to do the heavy lifting, and choose whether to make a huge sacrifice, when they learn his brother, who was presumed dead, may be in the Kenyan refugee camp where they used to live.
“The Good Lie’’ is a worthy and moving dramatization of the kind of true stories that have been told in documentaries like “Lost Boys of Sudan.’’ Opening in North American theaters in limited release on Oct. 10, it may not be anything like Witherspoon’s answer to “The Blind Side’’ (as the ads also imply), but is definitely worth seeing. It received huge applause after its world premiere over the weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival.