Unusual and Moving Film

Rating: Null/10 (15 December 2006)

One of the reviewers on Rottentomatoes comments on how place-specific this film is (San Francisco). The specificity is just one thing that makes this movie so memorable. I went thinking it would be maudlin and possibly a tearjerker. If anything, it was the opposite. Unusually realistic. Sometimes frantic, like homelessness.
Another Rottentomatoes critic said, astutely, that for a Father-Son film, Smith's character shows remarkably little chumminess with his boy, and that this is what makes the relationship so realistic. The movie is--but isn't--a Horatio Alger story. And (like *another* Rottentomatoes critic says!) there's a European impressionism about it. It's not a "feel good" holiday movie.
Altogether, pretty unforgettable. Just count the scenes where Smith is running.