The Herald (Glasgow)
March 1, 2004
By Hannah Mcgill

A studied effort to replicate the Miramax house style - big, sweeping, glossy dramas with independent spirit and intelligence - that takes itself terribly seriously but fails on almost every count. Joseph Fiennes stars as Stephen, a sensitive ex-con edging his way back into society via a job in a run-down diner owned by the cheerfully psychotic Horace (Dennis Hopper). Stephen's story runs parallel with that of a little boy named Leopold Bloom, who is cruelly neglected by his heartbroken, alcoholic mother Mary (Elizabeth Shue).

The effort to conceal a twist in the tale so obvious that you've probably guessed it already makes for a forced and awkward structure, as well as some very uncertain period detail.

The only truly entertaining aspect of this flabby, solemn film is the frankness with which it lifts its characters from other narratives. Fiennes replicates the twitchy, traumatised ex-con his brother Ralph played in Spider. Shue bases Mary on the intellectually frustrated housewife who got Julianne Moore her Oscar nomination for The Hours. Justin Chambers plays Mary's bad news boyfriend as an old drama school favourite: Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, right down to the tight white T-shirt and the libidinous late-night shouting. And Dennis Hopper? He just revisits one of his own greatest hits: Frank from Blue Velvet. It's hard to see where James Joyce fits in; the reference to Ulysses seems like little more than an earnest effort to confer some borrowed intellectual respectability.

The sooner independent American directors stop trying to crawl into Harvey Weinstein's pocket, and go back to making scratchy no-budget flicks about foul -mouthed convenience store clerks, the better for everyone.