Vadim Perelman’s film elicits our sympathy, as well as our wariness, for both dispossessed protagonists. Kingsley conveys the violence lurking beneath Behrani’s hatchet-sharp will. Connelly captures Kathy’s unnerving volatility. She becomes even more reckless when she falls off the wagon, and the danger heightens when a married cop (Ron Eldard), who’s fallen for her, uses the law for his own ends. The climax is a tragic pileup so appalling that it nearly derails the movie. Novelist Andre Dubus’s plotting may be too much for a two-hour movie. But the story’s details feel fresh. The vivid clarity of the images, the compressed fury of the tale, are impossible to get out of your head.
