The Bucket List

By Linda Winsh-Bolard


Carter Chambers and Edward Cole have nothing in common. Carter is an auto mechanic married to a retired nurse with stable family life and little money. Cole is billionaire, four times divorced, lonely and estranged from his only daughter. Carter is silent observer with great restraint. Cole is rapacious, loud and selfish.

Cancer brings them together. Cole, who was never sick before, bought an ailing hospital and instituted a policy of double rooms. When he wants a private one, his assistant is appalled: it would bring bad publicity.

Of course, private rooms and extra services, most of which were once thought to be basic care, bring hospitals a lot of money but that does not come into it. The astounding indifference of doctors to dying patients with HMO is nicely shown. Even to get his test results, Carter needs Cole’s help. That resonates very true with my experiences in US hospitals.

Both are given about a year to live. Fighting nausea and fear Cole finds a piece of paper with some odd things written on it. Carter explains that he once had a teacher who made his students to think about all the things they really, truly wanted to do before they “kicked the bucket”. He wrote some of them down. For Carter many of these things will never happen.

That is not how Cole sees it: All I have is money, he says. And if they want to do something, they will do it. And off they go to see Paris and Taj Mahal, Himalayas and the Great China Wall and beautiful women.

Yet, what they are really looking for is a bit of laughter and excitement that will help them to forget, even for a moment, that they’re dying.

How realistic is it? I don’t know. Cancer treats its victims very differently and where some die emaciated after a long, helpless suffering, others are more or less fine until about two weeks before they go. Are any of them up to climbing? I doubt that, but they might be up to a car and plane ride and the enjoyment of luxury. Many would be if American medical care was not so stingy with pain killers (very hard to get) and various helpful drugs that the insurance companies think needless loss of money where cancer patients are concerned.

Is it possible for two such guys get along? Possibly, I had shared hospital wards with very different people and we got along because the conditions bonded us.

Furthermore, I don’t think that is the point the film is trying to make. I do believe, that it is about living, not dying, at any age. Living because you might not be here tomorrow. When Virginia, Carter’s wife, attacks Cole because she feels that he is taking her husband away from her before he is dead, she clarifies the point: we all live with somebody and for somebody, and because of that we make many compromises. Maybe we would all be happier if we were truly clear about what we really want to do. Maybe the whole society would be better off.

It is not as good as the Grumpy Old Men but then, however good, and Freeman Morgan is one of the most capable actors I know, and however overpowering Nicholson is, they are not Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau. Nobody is. Such couples are the exception. But they are believable and sometimes even touching. Of course, the film is predictable, as death often is, but again it is not without charm or message.

A Warner Bros. release of a Zadan Meron/Reiner Greisman production. Produced by Craig Zadan, Neil Meron, Alan Greisman, Rob Reiner. Executive producers, Jeffrey Stott, Travis Knox, Justin Zackham. Co-producer, Frank Capra III. Directed by Rob Reiner. Screenplay, Justin Zackham.

Edward Cole - Jack Nicholson
Carter Chambers - Morgan Freeman
Thomas - Sean Hayes
Virginia Chambers - Beverly Todd
Roger - Alfonso Freeman
Angelica - Rowena King