Billy Brown (Gallo) has just been released and is planning to go home to visit his folks, some truly horrendous individuals well played by Anjelica Huston and Ben Gazzara. Unfortunately, before going into jail he told them he was going away for five years on government' work and even went so far as to leave a series of dated letters with a friend. His parents are expecting him to have a wife and, after, waffling and yelling and whining, he agrees to bring her over to meet them. Obviously, having been jailed for the last five years, Billy has no significant other and ends up kidnapping Layla (Christina Ricci) and persuades/threatens her until she agrees. Stuff happens.

Unfortunately, stuff is about right. The film takes an absolute age to go anywhere and does very little once it gets there. Billy is a horrible person: whining, cheating, lying, threatening, and bullying, petulant, amazingly repressed and just plain old disagreeable. The viewer just doesn't care what happens to this sad little man. Assuming you do have some interest, Gallo does provide you with sufficient back-story and characterisation to create a reasonable, if shallow, psychological profile of one of the most pathetic characters I've seen on the big screen. Layla is pallid and (dully) reactive. Ricci has been interviewed preaching well of this film, but I would suspect the truth is somewhere between appalled and horrified.

If you want to see an in-depth and complex examination of an utter loser see this.