TV Reviews : An Unflinching Look at James Brady on HBO

Far from your usual bio-pic study in courage, “Without Warning: The James Brady Story” (premiering Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO) is something you don’t see attempted on the screen every day: a portrait of a disabled man as obstinate, ignorant, bullying jerk.

Veteran screenwriter Robert Bolt (“Dr. Zhivago,” “The Mission”) was chosen by executive producer David Puttnam to script the teleplay, based on the fact that Bolt had suffered a stroke that left him with much the same sort of debilitation that Brady’s famous gunshot wounds left him. Though an unlikely choice, given his legend as a period-piece man, Bolt has brought a surprising amount of rage that may have been his own to this story, rage that the actors feed on and that helps carry the picture past its many flat spots.

In the title role, as the presidential press secretary felled by a would-be assassin’s bullet a decade ago, Beau Bridges has the kind of role that is an actor’s dream and nightmare, playing most of the movie immobile--and with a contorted expression--after the 20-minute prelude to disaster. He’s always been good at variations on balled-up frustration (think of “The Fabulous Baker Boys”), and never better than in his fits of fury here, where he seems imminently capable of violence even if unable to rise from a wheelchair.

Brady--or “Bear,” as he’s called by his wife Sarah (Joan Allen, also excellent) and President Reagan (Bryan Clark, an amusing if noncommittal impression)--dedicates himself to rehabilitation with resilient good humor and perseverance. Eventually, though, he starts to embarrass his family and himself in his vain quest to reclaim his old job and his increasingly profane and mean-spirited anxiety, leading to a four-letter-word-strewn climax with a disastrous day at the beach.

It’s a fault of the storytelling that we never quite know whether Brady--though set up as an ambitious politico--was quite so obviously a tyrant with his family before his injury. And the film ends all too soon after his apparently sudden redemption, as he at last allows his wife to buck conservative Republican tradition and join the gun-control lobby that recently pushed through the House a controversial bill in their name.

Still, if it stops well short of being great narrative work, it’s a measure of how emotionally honest “Without Warning” feels that you often stop to wonder how discomforted the real-life Bradys must feel watching its many unflinching, unflattering moments, a rare achievement for this sort of authorized version. The film airs again on HBO Thursday and June 24 and 27.