Each bend in the road positively screeches with the urgency of impending catharsis, but the film never earns its resolution.

The movie seems unusually honest in portraying the no-option existence of the working poor, but the story slips into melodrama in the last reel.

It's a film of mood -- and the mood is perfectly captured.

It’s a good thing the film is set in Northern California rather than North Carolina, because the only remaining cliché would be for the characters to deliver their lines with a thick Southern drawl.