The last thing you'd expect from the writer of Men in Black and Charlie's Angels is this affecting tale of one man's search for peace of heart and soul.

Billy Bob Thornton is Manual Jordan, a quiet, placid, convicted killer thoroughly institutionalised after two numbing decades behind bars.

He doesn't want to be released but when the parole board sets him free he heads back to the scene of the crime in search of redemption.

Here car park attendant-come-pastor Miles Evans (Freeman), who lets clubbers use his garage in return for suffering his sermons, gives him a job and a room.

Repentant Manual - who has the look of Gandalf's careworn urban brother - seeks out Adele (Hunter), the sister of his victim all those years ago.

Without letting on who he is, Manual forges a friendship and something more until he feels obliged to let her know the truth.

This quiet, gently haunting debut from screenwriter Ed Solomon almost imperceptibly works on the senses with first rate performances from Thornton and Hunter.

He's twenty years' adrift in a confusing sea of social manners and etiquette, quietly uncomprehending of a new world yet bent on salvaging his soul.

She suffers a condition of almost permanent disappointment and is terrified by the inevitability of her own son Abner careering off the rails.

Kirsten Dunst shows up as a rather redundant pill-popping little rich girl and night owl inspired by Manual into cleaning up her act.

However, it's Thornton who holds centre stage with a meditative Manual not really seeking forgiveness but delayed punishment for his crime all that time ago.

Tim Evans