rating:
(out of
4 stars)United States; 2000
Directed by Kenneth Lonergan; produced by Barbara De Fina, John Hart, Larry Meistrich, Jeff Sharp; written by Kennethe Lonergan
Starring Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, Rory Culkin, Jon Tenney, Amy Ryan
Below you will find a temporary review for this film. The real (better, more complete) review will be online very soon.
'You Can Count on Me' is about characters that could be real people. In
fact, there must be people out there like Sammy (Laura Linney) and her
brother Terry (Mark Ruffalo). Their parents died in a car accident when they
were kids. Now they are grown up. Sammy has a kid, Rudy (Rory Culkin), and
lives in the house that once belonged to her parents in the town of
Scottsville, NY. One day she gets a letter from Terry. He is going to visit
them. At first she is really excited but then she discovers he only wants to
borrow money. Circumstances make Terry stay in Scottsville and he and Rudy
become pals, although Terry is not always as responsible as he should be
with an 8-year old kid.
Sammy works at a bank, where Brian (Matthew Broderick) is the new manager.
Although he is a little annoying she ends up having an affair with him. He
has a pregnant wife and she is dating a guy named Bob (Jon Tenney) who wants
to marry her. Things are getting more complicated. To say too much would
spoil things, but things you normally expect in a movie like this do not
happen. Nobody gets cancer, not everything is solved, not every person is
happy. The movie leaves things open for us, like in real lives things are
very often not completely sure.
In a movie like this, about real people, it is very helpful if the actors
are natural and feel like real people as well. The movie could not have done
better with Broderick, Culkin and especially Linney and Ruffalo. They are so
great in their parts. The final moments between Linney and Ruffalo are very
true and the movie does not simply want to be a tearjerker here, it just
wants to give a possibility of how things like this could happen. 'You Can
Count on Me' is one of the best movies that tries to deal with real lives
like this.