Metacritic reviews

First-time feature helmer Brian Crano maneuvers some tricky tonal shifts with impressive ease in A Bag of Hammers, a droll, quirky comedy with a pleasant amount of heart.

The film has an earnest quality that asserts itself more and more as it sputters along, and the men reveal more personal reasons to insert themselves into the boy's life. It's a good lesson for other films of its ilk: Leaving the world of indie disaffection is an important first step on the road to greatness.

It's a film that should be appallingly twee, but more often than not is actually scruffy and sweet, thanks to a nicely underplayed turn by Chandler Canterbury as the kid, Kelsey, and the chemistry between Jason Ritter and Jake Sandvig as hipster grifters Ben and Alan.

A few striking performances - Ritter, Preston, and Canterbury are especially great - smooth out what might have been a much bumpier ride.

Woven amid the glib one-liners and contrived scenarios is an unexpected, and undeniably touching, sense of heart.

Suffers from both an odd, ineffective structure and a low-key tone that jars uncomfortably with the subject matter and makes the film's stakes seem unnecessary low.

A dicey blend that generates viewer goodwill but can't make its conflicting vibes gel, A Bag of Hammers will play best with the most soft-hearted viewers provided they don't mind rooting for unrepentant felons.

Any film tossing comic interludes among its closing credits has to be convinced of their hilarity and of the good will the movie has earned with viewers by then. Perhaps the film's naked traffic in sentiment up to that point made Mr. Crano so bold. Whatever; his confidence was unwarranted.

Rebecca Hall is wasted as Sandvig's sister and the film's voice of reason.

The real scam was the filmmakers tricking Rebecca Hall (and a cameoing Amanda Seyfried) into participating in this blunt instrument of an indie.