Editor Reviews:

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Based on the William Faulkner story and featuring one of Robert Duvall's finest performances, Tomorrow was first adapted by Horton Foote for TV's Playhouse 90 in 1960. Eight years later, Foote--whose script for To Kill a Mockingbird provided Duvall's screen debut--presented the same story as an off-Broadway play with Duvall and Olga Bellin in the lead roles, which they reprised in 1971 for this independently produced film.

As with Tender Mercies--which earned Academy Awards for both Foote and Duvall in 1983--Tomorrow tells a simple tale of gentle people, and the sensitive script, direction, and performances offer an enlightening portrait of compassion and unconditional love. Duvall plays Fentry, a Mississippi cotton farmer in the early 1900s who leaves his father's farm to work as the winter watchman of a dormant sawmill. There, he encounters Sarah (Bellin), a pregnant woman abandoned by her husband and suffering from a life-threatening illness. They eventually marry, but inevitably, Fentry (portrayed by Duvall as a kind of holy innocent) alone must raise the woman's child--a good-natured boy whose fate is determined by a heartbreaking claim of familial custody.

The story is framed by a murder trial, the outcome of which leads to the film's resonant and quietly moving conclusion. Like so much of Foote's work, Tomorrow was tailor-made for Duvall, and it has much to say about endurance, integrity, and uncommon decency under difficult circumstances. Directed by Joseph Anthony with an appropriately somber tone, this delicate drama nevertheless offers a wise and uplifting affirmation of the resilient human spirit. For Duvall's many admirers, this is a must-see film. --Jeff Shannon

Rating : - Two lonely people . . .
This is a movie for fans of a) William Faulkner, b) Horton Foote, c) Robert Duvall, and d) stage plays. Viewers unused to the pace of drama as written for the stage will find this adaptation of Foote's play slow and wordy. Confined mostly to the four walls of a shack, the action will seem claustrophobic at times. But the performances are wonderful, and Foote's always gentle vision of everyday people struggling for love and against loneliness makes the relationship between the story's two central characters poignant and touching.

Meanwhile, Duvall's performance is compelling. The only thing distracting about it is not his fault but Billy Bob Thornton's, who obviously stole from it years later for the unforgettable role he plays in "Slingblade." The early performances of so many actors show them still learning their craft, but the risks Duvall takes with his character shows him already an uncanny master of his art. Finally, Faulkner's world is given eloquent expression in this small black-and-white gem of a film, set in a kind of timeless place that his Mississippi represents. The DVD includes an interview with Duvall and Foote, made in 2003, and provides a number of interesting perspectives on the making of the film. Foote, for example, expresses reservations about the undue influence of the film's editor in the shaping of its final form, and Duvall describes a scene so crucial in his estimation that he would not see the film when the scene was cut.