G VB 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. Kurt Russell is a vain, self-absorbed and angry male model who gets stranded in Kansas after a photo shoot and is helped out by a passing farmer (Weaver) who has learned that he has terminal cancer. Bridging the divide between the honest, hardworking farmer and the selfish young man is Mare Winningham, the daughter of the farmer, who is attracted to Russell's character but is also disappointed at his lack of character and work ethic. The farmer hires the young man to help with the urgent harvest work, and the young man only takes the job so he can have enough money to go home again.Weaver plays his role without any bombast or melodrama...you can just feel his mortality slipping away from him, yet he knows he must set his fears aside to be able to get the harvest done on time and save his farm and his daughter's future. Russell's character is seething and confused, looking for something meaningful to give him a sense of purpose. Part of his attraction to Winningham's character is that she represents something more real and more beautiful than anything he has known before.Amber Waves is a highly underrated and moving story about people and their core values that holds up well even more than 30 years after the movie was made.

laurence-48 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. Some minimal stock footage was used of combines in wheat but it amounts to seconds of the film.Its sad that the movie could not have had the chance to get some decent shots of the machines doing the job.This is the only major factual fault in what really is a well produced, directed and acted TV movie.

lightninboy 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. Weaver and the others do excellent acting. Custom combining is an American tradition since World War II. In the late '70s and early '80s, there were a lot of combining crews, as combines were getting bigger and more comfortable to operate, yet they weren't as modern as today's combines. And a lot of those combines were Canadian-built Massey-Ferguson 760s. This was an ABC TV movie. It was filmed in Canada, though the movie is supposed to occur in the U.S.A. Weaver's character almost kills himself and loses a combine, but the harvest must go on.

NotSureifthisis7734 This movie is an insult to the viewer at every conceivable level. It is an abomination of junk writing, brain-dead story, wretched casting and mind-numbing pointlessness. I watched this film in sheer horror. There was nothing of any value on the screen. I had a better time watching "The Swarm." Every moment was false. It was as if someone had taken one of the greatest movies ever made, Days of Heaven, shoved it in a blender and then threw the results in my face. Wait a minute. It wasn't "as if," it was. Everyone associated with this picture should be ashamed to the depths of their being. They should have been blacklisted, fined, and never permitted to work in movies again. Alas, I have read many critics who ooh and aah over the rubbish and I guess in that way reveal they never saw a movie they didn't like. People this is a plea: watch Days of Heaven instead. Know the difference between art and dreck.