After accidentally killing a stranger in a fight, a middle-aged man down South is sentenced to six years in prison; once behind bars, he asks his volatile wife for a divorce, and yet upon his release finds he has strong desires to see her again and rekindle their rocky romance. Udayan Prasad directed this rambling adaptation of Pete Hamill's short story, one which is split between staccato flashbacks and a wan current plot (involving the ex-convict's two teenage traveling partners) which fails to propel the picture forward. William Hurt does some amazingly low-keyed work in the lead, but he can't carry the movie all by himself. Chris Menges' cinematography ably captures the backwater stretches of a strangely underpopulated Louisiana, and there's grit and conviction in Maria Bello's performance as Hurt's shrimp-fisher wife (even though her role, as written, is a wheeze). Still, the two kids (Kristen Stewart and Eddie Redmayne) are completely unreal, undermining this road trip with an irritatingly acrid artificiality which nearly stalls the movie out before getting us to the final gate. *1/2 from ****