Sunday Telegraph
March 14, 2004
By Catherine Shoard

Creepy but competent, this literary melodrama stars Joseph Fiennes as a puppy-eyed ex-con who fries eggs in a Midwest diner run by Sam Shepard. In a parallel story, Elisabeth Shue's husband and daughter get mown down by a trucker, leaving her to raise her young son alone, save for the help of her abusive builder boyfriend. Eventually the two tales intersect in a way that's as predictable as it is senseless, and whenever things get too dull, director Mehdi Norowzian rolls on Dennis Hopper to talk dirty in the diner.

Fiennes is fine, but it appears that this, too, will not be his breakthrough role. Shue does a notably bad job of the bad momma, a woman who apparently spends 18 straight years slugging vodka but still manages to keep her house nice and tidy.