A fairly well-made, if low-key drama, set in 1924, which ends, not unexpectedly, in violence. Its only charismatic performance is given by Sissy Spacek as a divorcee with two sons who works as the sole telephone operator in a small American town almost as forsaken as the one in The Last Picture Show. The town's no-good brothers, leering hillbillies straight out of Deliverance, set their caps at the winsome Sissy and you can almost see their eyes bulge when she falls for a sailor (Eric Roberts) on a few days' leave. Meanwhile the town's raggedy man, a horrendously scarred war veteran, prowls the streets and the fields around Sissy's home. This is clearly a situation destined to end in tears. Emotions, however, are something the film (directed by Sissy's husband Jack Fisk) doesn't reach. While remaining watchable, it never quite succeeds on any level, leaving its audience struggling to decide with which characters, the heroine apart, to sympathise. .


©ipc tx. Film content from TVTimes