Another of those backwoods/hillbilly feuding families dramas where a good beginning and better intentions are soon submerged beneath a morass of rampant melodrama. John Ehle's book may well have the 'beauty and depth of feeling' that screenwriter Carol Sobieski described in interviews, but if it does then she has made a hash of it. Kelly McGillis acts her socks off as the unwed mother who lives alone and nurses a guilty secret (pretty obvious that her baby's father is one of the rival clan), but she's fighting a losing battle against this script and the miscasting of Kurt Russell as the wandering clockmaker for whom she falls after he and his little daughter stumble on her cottage. The child (Amelia Burnette) is a real charmer, but has too little to do in further proceedings, which are strictly along East Lynne lines and become progressively more ludicrous. McGillis should have left well alone with countrified religion after Witness.


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