Amber Waves

This is a beautiful film, wonderfully acted with subtly and nuance; well written, well directed. I wish I could find it on DVD or streaming...

I saw this made-for-TV film when it aired 38 years ago. I recall it being much better than anticipated with cinematography featuring stunning landscapes and competent dramatic performances.

This is an excellent movie that is very hard to see these days. There is a difficult to find VHS tape version but no DVD yet.

This is an excellent television movie with much to say that was made during the peak of the made-for-TV era. It's the story of a widower (Dennis Weaver) and his kids who travel around the farm belt hiring out as professional wheat harvesters.

Everything about this movie is "classic," as far as custom combining movies go. About the only thing wrong with it is maybe too much licentiousness.

A spoiled rotten 'male model' (Kurt Russell) is forced to work off a debt by helping a man (Dennis Weaver) who has a threshing crew. The Foreman has a young daughter (Mare Winningham) and does not trust the young model as far as he can throw him.

I agree with all the other reviewers in that this is quite a well made movie, however you don't have watch too closely to see that actually not a lot of wheat gets cut by these custom cutters. In scenes with the combines, they spend most of their time just driving aimlessly around an already cut field in the dark or even worse making it appear like they are cutting wheat by in fact just driving the machine through some scrub grass.

Kurt Russell is a womanizing, irresponsible male model who is both full of himself and improbably on a shoot in the wheat fields of the Midwest, while aging Dennis Weaver works nearby with the barely profitable wheat harvesting company that he owns. Each man is having the worst day of his life, as Kurt is beaten up in a bar then fired for his now un-photographable looks and he ends up headed back to NYC with no money to get there.

Amber Waves (1980) is one of those little miracles of television that appeared at a time when so many low-quality TV movies were being produced. With a strong cast that includes Dennis Weaver, Kurt Russell and Mare Winningham, this poignant story is only superficially about American patriotism during the Vietnam war era--its true strength is in the humanity of the characters and the essence of their struggles to find meaning in an often heartless, random world.