Television Reviews : ‘Rising Son’: Portrait of Man Living Too Many Lies

Brian Dennehy creates a powerful portrait of a father living too many lies in “Rising Son” on TNT today (premiering at 5 p.m. with encores at 7, 9 and 11 p.m.).

The father, a foreman in a Pennsylvania factory, is proud of his life: His value system is defined by a Silver Star from World War II, his contented wife and homemaker, and two successful sons--one a lawyer and the other in medical school.

But his whole world is a pipe dream, seen through the hazy promises of the early Reagan years. The factory shuts down, the father is reduced to selling used cars, the sons are dysfunctional and secretly hate their father, and the wife, a touching Piper Laurie, stuns her husband by going out and getting a job. Even his war medal is phony.

Funny how illusions sneak up on you. The teleplay by Bill Phillips is in the tradition of post-war Arthur Miller father-son dramas. There’s a lot of Willy Loman in Dennehy’s character, and Matt Damon as the younger son who’s afraid to tell his dad he’s quit school, effects a quiet strength that is never moody or brooding. For her part, Laurie makes a pearl out of a sow’s ear of a role.

Dennehy’s false expectations and emotional denials ring with pity and fear--from the humiliation of walking into an employment office at age 50-something to a ferocious physical confrontation on a staircase with his son to his final “recognition” scene on a fog-shrouded lake.

The theatricality of the ending may appear pat but it is artfully designed and wholly genuine. Director John Coles’ Georgia locations (including a working auto factory in Atlanta) convey the texture of a small town in the Northeast.