An American thriller; A story about a young British woman who comes to Austin, Texas, to find her half-sister by way of their dead country musician father, and before long doubts are erased and chaos takes hold. There is an intriguing ambiguity to the stranger who rolls into town. Pent-up anger, pain, and defiance bubbles below the surface but never froths over into anything palpable, and refreshingly we are spared verbal conflict and manipulation and simplistic resolutions. The story creates empathy for the young woman as she tries to establish a connection to her new, foreign family. However, while engrossing and edgy, it fails to produce a vice-like grip on the viewer by the end. Instead, we get graphic violence in place of motive. Still, it is a smart, tense movie with two good performances, which make it just about work.
