Small Town Saturday Night

Let me say up front that I think it's incredibly difficult and rare for a first time film director to have the discipline to effectively direct his own script. Granted Ryan Craig's written and directed a couple of TV movies, but things change a lot when you're doing a real grownup film. The chance to see your every word and decision on the big screen makes it agonizing to cut a single scene... hey! You wrote that! That said, there are some excellent performances from a cast loaded with accomplished actors, not least Shawn Christian who's best known for his soap opera career and Chris Pine who gets to indulge his hunky looks while playing some seriously downer scenes. I don't think John Hawke (Winter's Bone and The Sessions) is capable of a bad performance and this one gives him plenty of room.

I gave it a 5 because of the writer-director's failure to make the fullest use of this wealth of talent, but since the film is playing on HBO and it's not a halfbad way to spend an evening.

The writing was lovely and characters were charming. John Hawkes' performance was fantastic, and really carried the film in many wars for me. The story itself is a bit too familiar but there was some nice mirroring of individual storylines. It could probably stand to be shorter. The pace is pretty slow but it reflects the pace of life in a small town like the ones these characters are all but trapped in. It felt more like a novel, really, as it depends more on the relationships between the characters than any real action to speak of, but for fans of this type of film it is a nice watch with some really solid acting throughout.

Grows on you, really fine piece of movie-making. Watch it a few times over the years, and you'll see what I mean. This is NOT a toss off film, it warrants a far higher rating than what I'm seeing so far on IMDb.

Great mixture of real life drama, comedy, making tough decisions that every moviegoer can relate to. Love the performances of all the key players, especially Chris Pine and Bre Blair... and the ones playing the 'major eff ups' do an extremely fine job, too. That's how people like that truly ARE.

Music is well integrated and appealing. Ryan Craig is a first rate writer and director, not just a good one. He has a fine touch for the human in us, while finding a sterling silver lining in the cloud.

Chris Pine wants to get out of the small town and get his country music career going. But his girl is still married to local cop Shawn Christian, his father Robert Pine needs his help, and so forth.

With the movie locked in the low-level depression of nothing to do and no place to go, the whole town seems to be like a surly teenager, with the main event being people getting drunk at the one bar in town without getting into a fist fight. As a portrait of that sort of hamlet (population 1382) it seems like a thousand dying towns scattered throughout the country, and the performances are all right. As a story it reminds me of Roman Hruska's assertion that the mediocre deserve to serve on the Supreme Court.

Is everybody too busy watching blockbusters to see this nice example of Indie film-making? It would be a pity, because they'd be missing a well-crafted cinematic narrative covering twenty-four hours in the small mountain town of Prospect. The film begins at dawn as a promising young country musician prepares for one last gig at the town bar, before heading off to see if he can make it in Nashville. As the day unfolds other citizens make their appearances - a regretful sheriff, his estranged wife, an alcoholic father, an overweight brother, a troubled ex-con and an overbearing mother. Their stories mingle in an varied mix of compact narratives, most of which are concerned with the relationships of parents and their children - some of them sentimental in tone, and others which display cold cruelty and pain.

A fine cast portrays this collection of characters realistically, while cinematographer Matt Kovalakides captures their high-country summer world so intensely that one can almost smell the pine resin. Everything speaks of a well-balanced team effort, and the characters and their stories are worth the dedication. By the time night falls over Prospect, a discerning audience might well feel they got more bang for their buck than if they'd seen a dozen self-important, hundred-million-dollar vanity projects.