Amusing film about murder

'Bernie' starring Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, and Matthew McConaughey. Directed by Richard
Linklater.


    "The most dangerous man a woman will ever meet is her lover or husband," a feminist on Vancouver's Commercial Drive told me many years ago. She was right and the movie 'Bernie' proves her point.
      "Bernie' is a film about a gay man, played wonderfully by Jack Black who meets a horrible, abusive rich widow, played by Shirley MacLaine.
   In the end Bernie gets tired of the widow called Marjorie Nugent. He kills her in her garage firing four shots into her back with a .22 rifle.
    But in this film, the director Richard Linklater allows the townspeople of Carthage in East Texas, where 'Bernie' happens, a big role. For 'Bernie' is based on a true story. Mixing fiction with fact, Linklater lets the actual people of Carthage to tell parts of the story of Bernie Tiele and Marjorie Nugent. The real Bernie Tiele is serving a 50 year sentence in a Texas penitentairy. We see him at the movie's end.
    But it's Jack Black and the citizens of Carthage who give the movie its flair and excitement. "He was a little light in the loafers," one person says of Black who plays a gay man delightfully. And the Carthage citizens fill in the background of  the story with amusing incidents.
   Sometimes I wondered what really went on between Bernie and Marjorie. But in the end the movie boils down to yet another murder  by a man who was also a liar and a cheater. Matthew McConaughey is the fly in Bernie's ointment. He plays the role of the outspoken prosecutor  Danny Buck Davidson who finally puts Bernie behind bars.
 Is this film politically incorrect? Maybe, but it was fun to watch.