So, this movie was quite a surprise. I picked it up because it was a crime movie where a desert and a muscle car featured heavily -- so how bad could it be? Unfortunately, I wasn't sure about it in the first 10 minutes. What was surely meant to be an emotional and harrowing experience, both Shane's time in Iraq and his homecoming, felt kind of hollow and forced, and I was worried.
But it gradually gained steam. The acting kept getting better, the characters better realized. I think the best acting really starts when Shane runs into an old friend from a bar, whose teasing and jibing just rings hollow to someone who's really been in the thick of it. (Brian McGuire as Mooneyham is just brilliant -- it's as though he sets all the rest of the movie free, just to be as exciting as it wants to be, when it finally gets around to it.)
In the end it was all I wanted it to be -- wryly funny, a little heart- pounding, sometimes sweet and sometimes wicked. Michael Madison (who also directed) reminded me a bit of Chris Evans, with his all-American good looks and easy-going style. Jeanette May Steiner is terrific as the free-spirited Cindy, a young woman to whose aid Shane comes when she gets in trouble outside a truck stop and with whom he forms an instant connection.
So, give it a chance. It's a diamond in the rough and just needs an investment of a few minutes. By the time I finished it I found that I really liked it.
