Lonesome Jim

Actor-turned-director Steve Buscemi's third film is like many of his performances: deadpan and understated, but enjoyable. Jim, played by Casey Affleck, is a bedraggled, perpetually downcast twentysomething who returns to his hometown of Goshen, Indiana after failing to make it as a writer in New York City. Worshiping a stable of literary types whose sole connecting link seems to be that they were all suicidal, Jim moves back in with his long-suffering parents and even worse-off older brother. Jim also gets involved with his raucously unstable uncle Evil, who works at the family's ladder factory but deals drugs on the side, and more happily meets a beautiful, ebullient nurse who's rather unaccountably attracted to him (as is her precocious young son). Lonesome Jim rattles along to a rather predictable conclusion without much energy—a quality accentuated by Affleck's laidback performance—but this small movie illustrates how conventions that are sometimes blown out of all proportion in Hollywood movies (like the very final “twist”) can be made to feel reasonably fresh and charming if handled with modesty and a lack of pretension. Like the title character, this film will hardly set the world on fire—it burns with much too pale a flame—but patient viewers will discover some rewards. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary by director-producer Steve Buscemi and writer James C. Strouse, a six-minute “making-of” featurette, and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for an offbeat indie film.] (F. Swietek)