STUDIO: Paramount
RELEASE DATE: June 17, 2008
STARRING: Kevin Bacon, Marcia Gay Harden, Miles Heizer, Marin Hinkle, Eugene Byrd and Bonnie Root
WRITTEN BY: Micky Levy
DIRECTED BY: Alison Eastwood
FEATURES: Deleted scenes

Rails & Ties, Alison Eastwood’s directorial debut, stands as a shining example as to a poor screenplay’s potential to offset the valiant efforts of talented filmmakers and actors. In the film, Kevin Bacon plays Tom Stark, a train engineer married to his job, whose wife, Megan (Marcia Gay Harden) is dying of cancer. The couple never had any children and for reasons not entirely clear, seems to be pulling further apart, rather than growing closer, as the end nears. This morose situation is only worsened when a suicidal woman (Bonnie Root) pulls her car up onto the tracks in front of Tom’s oncoming train, which kills her and orphans her son, Davey (Miles Heizer). According to protocol, the combination of the train’s speed, weight and distance from the car made it impossible for Tom to stop in time, without chancing a total derailment. But that doesn’t keep everyone around him from second-guessing his decision and he’s forced to take a leave of absence as he awaits an official hearing. In the meantime, Tom and Megan are given time at home, alone together, but don’t know how to spend it with one another. This changes abruptly when Davey escapes from a foster home and comes looking for Tom, in hopes of confronting him about the accident. One needn’t be a film critic to figure out where things head from there...

It’s the directorial work of Alison’s father Clint that serves as the obvious touchstone here. And why not? He’s one of the greatest living directors and his quiet, character-driven style suits this material well. The look and feel of his movies is also felt in the soft, simple cinematography of Tom Stern (who was Director of Photography for two of his best films, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby) and an understated score by Alison’s brother Kyle (whose music also appeared in those films). Eastwood also aims to make this an actor’s movie. And as a result, Bacon and Harden take their time delivering each of their lines and seem to revel in the silence between them. Giving a performance that reminds me of his work in The Woodsman, I’m finding that Bacon is most powerful when he hardly speaks at all, allowing his face to do the brunt of the work. And Harden, reminiscent of her Oscar-winning portrayal in Pollock, once again displays an uncanny knack for capturing those gray areas between anger and sadness.

But unfortunately, though Eastwood has enlisted some terrific people and shows directorial promise in her own right, it just isn’t enough to elevate the material. The screenplay is the real problem here. For starters, the film begins by thrusting us into a flurry of highly emotional scenes, choosing to introduce us to the characters experiencing them, later. It may sound like an original approach, but it doesn’t work here. But the dialogue is the most troubling; while lines such as "You’re like sand, Tom; the harder I try to hold onto you, the more you slip through my fingers" certainly describe the situation accurately and poetically, real people don’t come up with things like that in the middle of an argument. The film is also saddled with an awful lot of unnecessary, forced railroad symbolism. Not only is Tom a railroad engineer, but when he comes home each night, he avoids his wife and constructs a model train set in the garage. Coincidentally, Davey is also preoccupied with trains, even toting around with him a toy engine given to him by his late father. And something tells me that even the "rails" in the title are meant to suggest the main character’s parallel lives - seemingly incapable of meeting - while with the "tie" represents Davey, who eventually manages to bring them together. Pile on top of that a story that so far-fetched, it feels like a set-up rather than a serendipitous encounter, and you’re left with a movie that feels like a Hallmark, made-for-television special. I don’t mean to sound glib, but watching this, I felt much like Tom probably did: I can see things are headed for trouble just down the track, yet there’s nothing I can do but watch.

When Rails & Ties was released in theaters, it received very limited distribution and wasn’t seen by many. As a result, Warner Home Video seems to have intended that its DVD version be rented, not purchased. The only extra material included is a set of three deleted scenes, all of which serve only to further drive home some of the same themes the final cut already makes abundantly clear. But while I can’t quite recommend this film - even as a rental - I wouldn’t be surprised if Eastwood, armed with better screenplays, went on to create some great work. If she does, then I have a feeling this debut may later prove to be worth revisiting, in the context of a long career. But for now, Rails & Ties simply feels like a warm-up project for a talented director and her friends...one that was inspired by the desire to create something, anything, together, whether or not there was a story on-hand worth sharing with the world.