Dealing with loss in 'The Greatest'

'The Greatest" assembles a good cast in a clunky, shopworn story.

Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon play bereaved parents whose brilliant firstborn son died in an auto accident. Carey Mulligan, pregnant with the dead son's child, moves in with the grieving couple while contemplating her own uncertain future.

First-time writer-director Shana Feste has a lot to learn about staging scenes and avoiding cliches, but she sure knows how to cast a movie. In the passages where she gets out of her actors' way and lets them rip, "The Greatest" is not so bad.

Allen (Brosnan) and Grace (Sarandon) are the emotionally scarred survivors of the ghastly accident that killed their 18-year-old pride and joy, Bennett. Allen, a math professor, carries on with a stiff upper lip while Grace crumples into inconsolable rage and misery.

Obsessed with learning everything she can about the 17 minutes before her son died, Grace fixates on the past.

Her husband and their surviving son, Ryan (Johnny Simmons), seek to move on. Following advice he read in a grief manual, Allen gives her a bell to ring whenever she thinks of Bennett. She begins ringing it and refuses to stop.

The role of Rose (Mulligan) is clear. She is the bump-bellied life force that will reunite the family and carry it into the future. First, though, there are struggles, breakdowns and epiphanies.

The film creaks under the weight of its sentimentality, and its plot design is obvious from the outset. There's not much depth or rich, creative imagery, but it accomplishes what it sets out to do. It is transparently designed to move people, and it does. Anyone who has lost a loved one probably will drench a few tissues before it's finished.