I enjoyed the 1995 novel by Jim Grimsley, which seemed nearly unfilmable. This movie does nothing to change my mind about that. Besides the unbelievably intrusive score music (I've honestly never heard a more intrusive score as far as I can remember), I was actually enjoying the movie up until the last 20 minutes. Now here was where things were going to get tricky. The ending of the book is dreamlike and left rather ambiguous. It could be quite difficult to portray it on screen. Writer-Director James Bolton has failed at the task. In the movie, it all comes off as so absurd and when all is said and done the movie felt pretty pointless. I think, in order for this movie to work, you would have needed to take the book and make it your own. The ending really should have been changed. It may have angered fans of the book, but you would have ended up with a better movie. I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending in the book either, but I didn’t mind it. Here I despised it.

I thought it was a decent movie with some nice scenery and solid performances from the two leads, but the ending just doesn’t work. I really don’t like when a story is grounded in reality and then becomes a fantasy. I guess I just prefer things to be one way or the other, not a mixture of the two.

Regardless, I suppose it’s still worth a watch.

6/10 (C+)

Would have been a B/B- before the finale.