Danny Glover is a little late calling, but he has a good excuse: He's on the way to the dentist. The dentist is in Seattle. Glover flew there from Los Angeles.

He's been going there for seven years, part of a long-term "project," as he calls it, involving everything from oral surgery to braces to pulling teeth. But he's near the end of the road now - he says he's in his last year. At 65, he's finally getting his dental health straightened away.

It's all part of a life in transition, a situation that puts Glover on the same track as Donovan Matheson, the character he plays in the new Canadian movie Donovan's Echo. Donovan is an alcoholic who lost his wife and daughter in a car accident 30 years earlier. Now he has returned to the small town where they lived and is picking up mysterious echoes - events with a mystical deja vu - that link him to the past. If he can decipher the message, he may be able to redeem himself.

It's a low-budget, independent movie made by Jim Cliffe, a first-time director, and it's miles away from the studio blockbusters - notably the Lethal Weapon series of films - for which Glover is known. But that's fine with Glover.

"Somebody sends me something and I read the material and I get excited about the story," he says. "I was very intrigued by it. It's a very intelligent film."

Like Donovan, Glover says he's at the point where he's thinking about his life and his past. And he says he also understands the deja vu elements of Donovan's Echo. "It happens to me all the time, you know what I'm saying?," he said. "Meeting someone, seeing someone, finding someone, connecting with someone, finding a relationship with somebody that you didn't anticipate. I'm challenged all the time with keeping that space open."

His own life has changed markedly in the past few years. Two years ago, he got married to a woman from Brazil, and he is now trying to learn Portuguese.

"I had to be more specific about what I was saying and shaping what I was saying so she could understand it with her English. Those are the kind of things that are amazing . . . every day I'm reminded of how my life has changed. The little nuances of life that you don't think you're going to do any more."

The fact that Donovan's Echo - which was filmed in B.C. - was made outside the Hollywood studio system doesn't matter much to Glover, however. He's made everything from small Canadian movies (like Poor Boy's Game) to edgy foreign movies (Lars von Trier's Manderlay), and he tries to keep himself open for whatever might come along.

"You take what comes," he said. "If somebody had offered me the sidekick in the Iron Man film, I would have taken that. At this point in my life, the studio system has changed so much.

"I'm not averse to doing stuff that I believe in."

That's part of the reason Glover now produces movies as well, through his company Louverture Films. It takes on a variety of projects - the documentary, The House I Live In, which won the Sundance Grand Jury prize, say, or Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the Thai film that won the 2010 Palme d'Or at Cannes.

"Some people's life is governed by what their publicists or what their managers define and shape or frame what they should do. I don't have that. I do what I feel like doing."

He went on, "Donovan's Echo falls right into that. In terms of creating another space . . . you give me a script and I love it, I'm in it."

Donovan's Echo opens Feb. 24 in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Kelowna before expanding to other markets.

jstone@postmedia.com