Rails & Ties

Rails & Ties ***

Directed by Alison Eastwood
Written by Micky Levy

Starring:
Kevin Bacon as Tom Stark
Marcia Gay Harden as Megan Stark
Miles Heizer as Davey Danner
Marin Hinkle as Renee
Eugene Byrd as Otis Higgs

102 Minutes(Rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements, an accident scene, brief nudity and momentary strong language. )
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Going into "Rails & Ties," I didn't really know what to expect. The film premiered last month at the Toronto Film Festival, yet I never encountered anyone who saw a screening of it or even knew what it was. It had hardly any buzz. It opened to lukewarm reviews, and it opened with a box office smaller than the amount of money I made last year working in a theatre. I was pleasantly surprised. "Rails & Ties" is the directing debut of Alison Eastwood, with strong relation to the other famous Eastwood out there, Clint. In fact, she is his daughter. She has done acting work in before, and the film that I seem to relate to her best with is "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," oddly enough directed by her father, but with this movie-which doesn't have the name Clint on it anywhere-it's clear that maybe in a couple of films she'll direct her way to the big top. "Rails & Ties" is a quietly effective and extremely well acted drama, and perhaps it suffers a bit from being too loaded with drama, a fault of the script. But what makes it aim higher than your standard made for television drama is the performances by Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden-who is also out there right now is a good indie drama called "Canvas." As for Bacon, this is some of the best work he's done in a few years-maybe the last great work he did in "Mystic River" or even "The Woodsman," and he's done several films since then.

Bacon and Harden play a married couple-Tom and Megan Stark-who have been married for several years but their relationship is dying out. It could be from the fact that they never had children during their long marriage, and it could also be that Tom can't face the fact that his wife is dying of cancer. Tom works as a train driver, and driving the train on one fated Tuesday he sees something on the tracks-a car. He makes a judgment to go by the books and try to slow the train down instead of pulling an emergency break, and ends up killing the woman inside, who wanted to die anyway. Her eleven year old son manages to get away. The kid, Davy, ends up being sent to a foster home where the woman always wanted a girl. He escapes and ends up going to Tom and Megan's house. She is excited and wants to keep him-without letting the authorities know. He'll know that if they found out he would loose his job, and his upcoming hearing does not make things better. But they keep Davy and begin to care for him as their own, while Davy's social worker is hot on the trail trying to find the boy who has been declared missing.

There are a few eyerolling moments scattered throughout the film, but I think a lot of the fault lays with the screenplay, by Micky Levy. Some lines like Megan speaking to Tom-"You're like sand. I keep trying to get a hold of you and you just slip through my fingers" is a bit out there, and maybe there is just one too many dramatic plot devices into place. Davy's mother is rather out there-with men, drinking, maybe even drugs. The cancer plotline. Even the fact that Davy and Tom are very much alike, from their clothing to the fact that both of them love trains. But the acting manages to make this film be something more than a melodramatic excursion. Kevin Bacon is very strong here, in a season that is filled with great male performances. Marcia Gay Harden is doing a different variation of "Canvas"-still ill, and with that same maternal tendency. I liked the way in which Eastwood directed this film. She never got too showy or experimental. She seemed keen are trying to tell an effective story, which she does. She tells a story of a man that seems set into his ways-and distant from everything that is important. He doesn't know how to progress forward, a strong irony as his career and life is built about constant motion. "Rails & Ties" isn't the strongest film out there, but in the disappointing dramas of the last two weeks, this one is actually one worth soughting out. The box office disappointment is a shame.

Now Playing at Angelika and Lincoln Center 12 and IMAX, but both theatres are giving it up and its moving to
AMC Empire 25 and Village East Cinemas Friday November 2nd.