In this movie Famke Janssen as Kailey Sullivan is far from her Jean Grey role in "X-Men." Here she is a rough-looking woman who is good at card and great at billiards, better known in the city as "pool." When we first see her in the city, meeting her 10-year-old son on a park bench as he walked to private school, we wonder what might have happened that she has to be sneaky that way.
When we get to know Jaymie Dornan as her son Gulley, and see how his own dynamics at home work, we get a glimpse that there is something very wrong in his relationship with his dad who it turns out is a seminary drop out and still seemingly under the control of his religious mother.
The other interesting character is Temple, Texas native Rip Torn as Teddy Quinette. He owns a pool hall in the city and we learn early that he is the "go-between" that allows Gulley and Kailey to communicate. She mails letters to her son and he drops by the pool hall to pick them up. But mom orders, read them and destroy them, don't keep any around.
As the complete back story unfolds Kailey and Gulley's dad messed around and she got pregnant, but also got into some trouble and the grandma arranged that she would not have a record if she would give up the baby, divorce the dad, and agree to never have any contact with her son.
If you are looking for a story with an ending where everyone comes out happy, this one will not do it for you. But if you want to see a gritty movie about the difficulty of split up families, this is a good one.
SPOILERS: Kailey figures out that not only is Gully generally unhappy with his dad and step-mom, he is also being mistreated at times. So she resolves to kidnap her son and bring him to a place where they can start a new life. She chooses Canada. But she needs quite a large sum of money to get fake passports made, and she gets that through hustling at the pool hall. In an unfortunate turn of circumstances for Kailey she and Gulley are intercepted by authorities as they await a bus to Canada and, when a fake gun falls out of her dropped purse, and she goes to retrieve it, an agent shoots her. They never get to Canada, as she dies at the wheel of the truck she was trying to drive off in.
When we get to know Jaymie Dornan as her son Gulley, and see how his own dynamics at home work, we get a glimpse that there is something very wrong in his relationship with his dad who it turns out is a seminary drop out and still seemingly under the control of his religious mother.
The other interesting character is Temple, Texas native Rip Torn as Teddy Quinette. He owns a pool hall in the city and we learn early that he is the "go-between" that allows Gulley and Kailey to communicate. She mails letters to her son and he drops by the pool hall to pick them up. But mom orders, read them and destroy them, don't keep any around.
As the complete back story unfolds Kailey and Gulley's dad messed around and she got pregnant, but also got into some trouble and the grandma arranged that she would not have a record if she would give up the baby, divorce the dad, and agree to never have any contact with her son.
If you are looking for a story with an ending where everyone comes out happy, this one will not do it for you. But if you want to see a gritty movie about the difficulty of split up families, this is a good one.
SPOILERS: Kailey figures out that not only is Gully generally unhappy with his dad and step-mom, he is also being mistreated at times. So she resolves to kidnap her son and bring him to a place where they can start a new life. She chooses Canada. But she needs quite a large sum of money to get fake passports made, and she gets that through hustling at the pool hall. In an unfortunate turn of circumstances for Kailey she and Gulley are intercepted by authorities as they await a bus to Canada and, when a fake gun falls out of her dropped purse, and she goes to retrieve it, an agent shoots her. They never get to Canada, as she dies at the wheel of the truck she was trying to drive off in.