Terra promessa

All depression without any real transition as to the why? You just kind of have to accept that's just how it is once high school is over and feel their pain without any inkling of hope. Leave the knife and sleeping pills at home when you watch this one.

Two principles are anxious to get out of a small burg in the mid west and one refuses to leave the only place where he ever had any recognition (as a star high school athlete) and becomes a local cop. The wild card here is a drifter and borderline sociopath who nonetheless also needs something like "home", but has no idea what that is.

Played by Meg Ryan as you've never seen her. Although if you rent "Hurlyburly" you'll see what she can do with a well written part not seemingly made for her; this woman can act, but apparently would rather have Nora Ephron help her be a star and get fat deals playing variations on the same person. Rant aside, Ryan's character hooks up somewhere in the west with the most disaffected of the small-towners, played as a not very bright but enigmatic loser by Kiefer Sutherland. The pull of "home", both real and imagined, leads Kiefer and Meg back to small-burg with tragic consequences. There is a real 80's feel to this. Ennui and fear and neediness combine as America ostensibly does big things, a few people get really rich, and people like these characters instinctively know that most people, especially ones like them, have fewer prospects than their parents. Unlike me, the movie is not at all didactic, so check it out as one of the more outstanding "feel-bad" movies I've ever seen.

No matter what the critics contend I loved this movie - I like the actors - all of them, not just the top 4. I thought the top 4 should have gotten Oscars. The film is depressing but it is supposed to be that way. The scenery and music just add to the awesomeness. References to President Regan made it more relevant. The despair and frustration of growing up in this movie are not equalled anywhere else. Two thumbs up.

Dave Hancock is a small town athletic star who goes away to college as a basketball player on scholarship. When he washes out of the team he drops out of college and comes home to find a job on the local Police department where he's comfortable among the folks he's always known and able to relax in his former glory.

Mary his head cheerleader girl friend goes away to school to study art but also longs for the small-town life and the boy she's left behind. She's got big dreams but is afraid to leave the comfort of the small town and afraid to tell her family she wants to stay.

Danny Rivers, tagged `the Senator' was a nobody in high school and can't wait to leave for the world outside the town he's grown up in and the bleak undemonstrative family that raised him.

When Danny meets and marries a crazy do-as-she-pleases girl he decides to return home and all of their lives are changed forever...

I found this movie to be evocative of a period and had better than average character development but this film will not appeal to all. It is a sketch of a time and a place and the people there. They are not archtypes, they are not universal but they are realistic and you can care about them and as with many sketches the viewer is left with the desire for more, a more complete picture, a better sense of what comes next and even a few more details about the present.

I read the summary of the movie and I saw the line "the other side of the American way of life" and I was wondering what it was. I'm Dutch, so it was a relief to see that America wasn't as perfect as it seemed. the movie wasn't really what I expected from it. but not in a negative way. I simply loved the movie. the simplicity of it. I only knew Kiefer Sutherland and Meg Ryan (Kiefer was the reason I bought it). Kiefer was great as Danny, but I was stunned by Meg as the almost trashy Bev. I almost cried at the end, but I only want to say: Watch it, as fast as you can. and don't expect anything, because you won't get what you'll expect.