Sappy and predictable from the get-go, this inarticulate little indie clearly harbors a lot of big ideas about human nature and the nature of relationships, none of which are ever explored to any satisfying end. A seemingly reserved man of few words, aging drifter Sam (Donal Logue) stops on his cross-country travels to get his malfunctioning motorbike fixed in a tiny, unassuming dead-end New England town. But we soon learn that Sam, possessing a kind of rugged, bearlike Nick Nolte/Kris Kristofferson charm, has another much more important reason for stopping in this one-horse town: his daughter, Audrey lives there, and as we learn, Sam hasn’t seen her in 30 years (although we’re never quite sure why he left his family so abruptly), yet now he’s determined to suddenly insert himself back into her life.
But before he can get on with the work of father-daughter reconciliation, he checks into a no-star motel on the coast and strikes up an awkward relationship with motel manager Kate (Grey’s Anatomy star Kate Walsh), who turns out to be a big city legal eagle who quit her high-powered job to live under the radar as a small-town motelier. Director McCormick keeps things ambiguous as to why these two societal dropouts made the odd life choices they made; however, thanks to some all-too-conspicuous directorial string-pulling, as soon as these two searching souls meet, you know they’ll be having a fling soon enough (never mind they have nothing in common and very little to discuss). Although we’re never really given much of a window into either of their psyches, Kate at least seems to be hip to Sam’s façade of a laconic mystery man—but we’re also supposed to believe she’s attracted to his “lostness.” (Or, being the tourist off-season, perhaps she’s just happy to meet any man who isn’t another stumblebum local.) However, from the beginning, we can intuit by the film’s fondness for gentle banjo/dobro neo-bluegrass incidental music that Kate and Sam will be making itinerant whoopee in a flea-bitten motel bed soon enough.
But it’s at this juncture that writer/director McCormick begins to seriously bend universal logic in forcing these two unlikely lovebirds’ relationship into some sort of committed partnership that seems wholly unearned. Next thing you know, Sam’s helping Kate out in the motel kitchen, obediently serving food to an unexpected influx of tourists. Problem is, we’re never given any good reason to think these two ships passing in the night are anything but incompatible—perhaps they’re just simply bored with drifting through life alone and rudderless. This is yet another indie feature that’s felled by its pretentions to Middle American warm-heartedness and desperate attempts to cater to a mainstream audience. Not Recommended.