Addiction is not an easy thing to get right, either on the
big screen or in the real world. There are few things more disheartening than
seeing someone in the midst of a chemical dependency, and one of them is having
to go through such a thing for yourself. Portraying that kind of heartbreak,
that desperation, that body-flooding pain is a difficult tightrope to walk from
a narrative standpoint.
Going too far in either direction could result in a
disaffected wake-up call that only reminds audiences of how good they have it, or a glorified Very
Special Episode that treats the matter far too simply to really connect. In the
hands of writer/director Peter Hedges, whose last work was the aggressively
forgettable Odd Life Of Timothy Green, we get a surprisingly effective walk
straight down that tightrope with nary a wobble in sight.
