This psychological drama-thriller would seem to have the dream team behind it - a thoughtful director (Bruce Beresford) and one of Hollywood's most versatile and talented actors (Richard Dreyfuss). Dreyfuss delivers but Beresford's handling loses its direction as the movie hovers between a sensitive issue (autism) drama and whodunit thriller. Dreyfuss plays Jake Rainer, a once-prominent child psychiatrist who was 'de-frocked' for a disastrous incident earlier in his career. However, he's forced out of his professional and emotional shell when a nine-year-old autistic boy (Ben Faulkner) witnesses the grisly murder of his parents. Can Dreyfuss delve into his tormented mind? The little man (Dreyfuss) is the whole film and he gets unsympathetic support from Linda Hamilton as his bullying wife and John Lithgow in another of his by-the-numbers but thoroughly dislikeable characters. An 18-year-old Liv Tyler makes her screen debut.

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