Grind Reviews

When was the last time you saw a movie in which people -- even working-class people -- actually went to work? Chris Kentis and Laura Lau's low-budget debut (between them, they directed, cast, edited, produced and cowrote) revolves around blue-collar brothers Terry (Paul Schulze) and Eddie (Billy Crudup), who live by the time clock at the local treadmill factory. Terry, who supplements his rivethead salary by working petty scams for a local bad guy, has a wanly pretty wife, Janey ( Hal Hartley regular Adrienne Shelly), a new baby and tract house in Clifton, NJ. Hot-rodding younger brother Eddie, fresh out of prison, comes to stay until he gets back on his feet. Terry gets Eddie a job at the factory, Eddie takes the night shift so he can work on his new car during the day, and the inevitable happens: Eddie and Janey -- restless and a bit overwhelmed by motherhood -- drift into a profoundly ill-considered affair. Some slightly overstated symbolism aside, this modest, sharply observed drama is that rare thing in today's overheated indie market: a character-driven study of fairly ordinary lives, without a shocking hook or self-aggrandizing hommage in sight. The performances are good without being showy -- it's a particular pleasure to see Frank Vincent, who plays the brothers' embittered dad, break out of the wiseguy ghetto -- and the milieu carefully realized. It's dangerous to overpraise a small film, but this modest slice-of-life drama is everything the artificially hip, grotesquely overhyped FEELING MINNESOTA wasn't.