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Joey gets out of prison after six years. What crime he has served we don't know yet. He goes to his parental home and rings on the door. A blonde opens. Joey asks for his brother Tommy, troubled the blonde goes to get him. A surprised Tommy invites his younger brother. Against his wife's (the blonde, Lorraine) wish Tommy and Joey agree that Joey should live at their home a while, until he gets a job and can get a place of his own.

Tommy sells grass and Lorraine works as stripper at private parties. Joey is determined to not get in to jail again and begins to work as a window cleaner. Something that Tommy think is stupid, because there's more money to earn on drugs.

Joey - who according to himself, is a bit 'slow' since an incident in childhood - develops with time a special relationship with Lorraine, who's at first is skeptical to Joey's stay in the house. Tommy appear the longer the film goes as a real asshole - he doesn't to anything home, is unfaithful and lies to his wife. When Joey asks Lorraine is happy with her situation he explain, in the key scene of the film, that marriage doesn't have any benefits; "You get marry when you're in love, then you get tired with each other". Lorraine is in any case grateful of that Tommy haven't during their more than four years together never have beaten her once. Something that her former husband did.

No Way Home (the title unfortunately sounds like an inferior action flick.) is a traditional film, without too many clichés. The director manages to work up scenes and solutions we recognize to something natural. Powerful, with an everyday tone (e.g. when Joey visits his former girlfriend).

The actors in the three leading roles are exquisite: Tim Roth as Joey does a typical Tim Roth role without because of that it would be too much Tim Roth of the role. James Russo (Tommy) makes a role portrait who resembles that kind of things he done before, but I want to rank this performance as the best I've seen from him. Deborah (Kara) Unger as Lorraine, who placed the centre of gravity on the acting and not to look sexy, convinces with her restrained acting style in her study of a woman who's become tired.

They said Tim Roth was yet to turn in a bad performance back in the late nineties. I truly know he never will. He is one of my favorite actors, and No Way Home is a film that deserves much more recognition, it's cinema release hardly noticed. It is a low key film as in cinema appeal. It's a more dramatized sort of movie, with a straight forward plot. Ex con Roth, playing another vulnerable type, and he does it, bloody well here, has just got out of prison. His bad arse older brother (Russo) begrudgingly takes him in, where too the misses (Unger) isn't hot on him staying with them. She too is a stripper, Unger appearing in more and more movies around this time. Now Russo, who's into selling drugs, and owing money, is not really providing the best environment for Roth who has to report to a PO, who tells him, "I can pop up at your place anytime. I don't need a warrant. I don't need a reason". So you can imagine what ensues. Unger is hot why doing a gig for an old guy's birthday, where Roth tags along. Startling truths about that night, prior to Roth ending up in the can, surface, even an old girlfriend hating him, for taking the rap. Heavy bits of impactful gore here and there, it's start, reminding you, prison's no picnic. Yes I do say No Way Home is a simplified drama, all it's bits of plot and story, nothing new, but if you love Tim Roth, it's worth it for seeing another splendid performance, this one at his most vulnerable, it's kind of demeaning, the character, this fine brave actor plays.

An ex-con is released from the pen and returns home determined to go straight. He moves in with his brother and sister-in-law and learns of his brother's troubles with a local crime organization. The brother's problems excalate to the breaking point when the thugs demand more money than he has. This was a good show, however it had several flaws; namely the gunfire sounded like underpowered fireworks, and some of the kicks and punches were obviously not connecting. Extremely violent, with buckets of blood.

Just saw this film for the first time, 8-Jan-06. It conveys to me why I like Boys in the Hood and New Jack City. As a self described movie person, who only learned and saw the film maker's art through the lens of the boob tube beginning in the 1960s, I would like to recommend this movie. When the movie opened up, I just assumed a mid USA rust belt city that could be any one of thousand places. Chicago, Gary Indiana, Cleveland, etc. The ending surprised me , in that the cops from NYC showed up at their parents house. The last scenes action did not.

The first half of the film I just could not stop watching. We all grow up with dreams. We all think things will be like they are in the movies. At least the famous ones. The Classics. The reality of Boys in the Hood, New Jack City and The Best Years of Our Lives, later on in the film slaps you in the face. The ending did not do it for me. Every thing leading up the ending was believable. Going back home to the old neighborhood after getting out. Getting hooked up with family. Seeing people moving on, moving to their same end. The girl who was left back and was about to by hooked up to a violent looser like Loraine's 1st husband. Diane marrying a nice quiet boy, like she thought Joey was. Joey looking around and seeing the life he thought he would have. I just could not watch the strip scene with Loraine. The last good scene was Joey and Loraine in the car talking.

I would like to hope the ending was forced on the director because of perceived market forces.

This is my first experience with a Giovinazzo film, and with all the actors, so it's totally fresh eyes. I liked the film. I knew from early on, when the brother is introduced, where the story was going to go. It would have been thrilling had I been wrong, but I wasn't. That didn't diminish the film in any way. All the production qualities were excellent, which left me only watching three actors really inform their characters. Consistency of mood I would call it. Even when there are brief happy moments, the smile or laugh is expressed, but the hard truth underneath is still apparent. There are a lot of references to Tim Roth's Joey being slow, which I don't quite buy. He carries on cohesive conversations, has logic, understands consequences, and makes decent decisions. He isn't bumbling through life. There's only one line I recall about him being very smart before, which is valid to support a change in mental capacity, but I would rather have had them refer to his malleability more that mental capacity since I did not see him as "slow". Having said that, I did accept the story line that his peers in their youth and older, rowdy, unthinking selves would call Joey that. The one thing I appreciated most about this film was the total lack of over-reacting that so often happens when there is violence. Violence and fear are part of these people's lives, so, when it happens, it's just part of that particular day. Brilliant restraint. Even at the end, there is what I might call the "look" that could have occurred between the brothers, and, thankfully, didn't. To the end, the film stayed true to it's mood and truths. That's what I think kept me engrossed in it.