Actors always relish the challenge of playing someone with a disability or handicap. Sometimes, though, when the role involves impairment of speech, the result can be a challenge to audience as well as actor. So it's understandably difficult to follow Robert De Niro's dialogue here as Walt, a retired security guard who has a stroke while trying to help a man in trouble at their rundown apartment building. To Walt's horror, part of his therapy involves vocal lessons from another neighbour, Rusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman), transvestite den mother of a group of drag queens, whom homophobic Walt hates and despises. As the odd couple, despite the expletives they hurl at one another, find common ground, there's an integral thriller sub-plot involving money stolen from the local Mr Big. Often uneasy and a little too in-your-face, the film, like its (dislikeable) protagonists, does come good in the end.