A Price Above Rubies

You've gotta give writer/director Boaz Yakin credit: the man's got guts. His first feature, 1994's Fresh, tackled the story of a pre-teen "inner-city" drug courier (and with such authority that New Yorker critic Anthony Lane mistakenly assumed that he, Yakin, was black); for this, his second, he's turned his attention to the secretive, patriarchal world of New York City's Hasidim, with Renee Zellweger (Jerry Maguire) starring as a modern woman torn between tradition and such deadly sins as pride and lust. Unfortunately, where Fresh was tightly--some might argue too-schematically--plotted, Rubies is hopelessly muddled, drifting from scene to scene with no sense of narrative rhythm or pacing and precious little sense. The performances, meanwhile, are a mixed bag: Zellweger demonstrates again that she can do more than Cute; Glenn Fitzgerald, as her devout hubbie, is hit and miss (but brilliant whenever he hits); Christopher Eccleston, as a relative who seduces our heroine, might as well be wearing a set of plastic horns and carrying a rubber pitchfork. Optional. (M. D'Angelo)