Rails & Ties

More proof that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree: like her famous father Clint, Alison Eastwood has segued from acting to directing. Her tyro feature Rails & Ties is assured and deliberately paced; unfortunately, it's also somewhat hackneyed, and rather dreary. Lifelong railroad fanatic and by-the-book engineer Tom Stark (Kevin Bacon), who is too emotionally stunted to effectively deal with the suffering of his cancer-stricken wife Megan (Marcia Gay Harden), slams his train into a car parked in the railroad crossing rather than risk a derailment, in the process killing an apparently suicidal woman whose nine-year-old son Davey Danner (newcomer Miles Heizer) survives. Eventually, Davey shows up at Tom's house to accuse him of murdering his mother, although he gradually softens toward the engineer and becomes a surrogate son to childless Megan. Bacon plays the railroad enthusiast with just enough passion to make him sympathetic, and Harden is fine as the increasingly desperate wife who wants something more out of her remaining days, but the insertion of Davey into the storyline inevitably leads to both predictability and mawkishness. Not a necessary purchase. [Note: DVD extras include eight minutes of additional scenes, and trailers. Bottom line: a disappointing extras package for a disappointing film.] (E. Hulse)