ON ME presents its portrait of everyday life in a small upstate New York community where everyone knows the local cop and no one is happy. Sammy, Laura Linney, is the single-mom sister and Terry, Mark Ruffalo, is the loser brother who pops into town for a quick loan to help out a pregnant girlfriend. The issues between them get played out around Sammy's eight year son whom Terry befriends but in ways that betray his lack of maturity and around Matthew Broderick as the new straight-laced bank manager who deceives his 6 month pregnant wife for an impassioned fling with Sammy. The affair is a good measure of Sammy's desperation. All roads seem blocked.
Terry is just another burden.
These issues simmer at a steady temperature without splashy resolutions. Director Lonergan pulls his punches whenever a genre convention comes into view but he provides a gratifying does of realistic observation in its stead. Mark Ruffalo has been praised as the second coming of Dean and Brando, and while I find it impossible to see the heat of the old icons in the shell of a slacker, he does deliver a fine, restrained performance while Laura Linney positively shines. It is little wonder that she is being touted for an Oscar nomination. It may seem ironic, but it is the excellence of her acting that raises the coefficient of reality several degrees.