Empire Falls
A frame-bursting roster of actors crowds this two-part HBO miniseries, which is nothing less than a look at America through the lens of a small New England town. Richard Russo adapted his ownnovel, a story of a gently depressed factory town that has always been run by the wealthiest family around (currently lorded over by matriarch Joanne Woodward). Ed Harris plays the central role, a decent, cautious man who runs a local diner and carefully negotiates the political niceties of Empire Falls; Paul Newman is his rapscallion of a father (the son is perpetually picking food out of Dad's beard), Helen Hunt is Harris's ex-wife, Aidan Quinn his feistier brother, and Robin Wright Penn his tragical mother seen in flashbacks.The goal of Russo and director Fred Schepisi seems to have been fidelity to the novel, which gives the film a pleasingly relaxed pace but also a somewhat literal-minded binding. Even that doesn't explain the general lack of tautness, or why so much of the dialogue has an awkward fit in actors' mouths. Harris and Newman, of course, are younger and older versions of American monuments, and their sheer presence goes a long way toward making the picture work (for the premium Newman-Russo match, see Robert Benton's sublimefilm ofNobody's Fool). Most of the twists in the final reels are genuinely affecting, and the movie has the courage to end on a mild note rather than strain to tie everything up. It's a fitting finale for an unassuming enterprise.--Robert Horton