Film

In her switch from performing to directing, Eastwood—who got her start as a child actor in dad Clint’s Bronco Billy—jumps the tracks. She would have been better served if she’d chosen for her debut a worthier script than Micky Levy’s cloying sudser about West Coast commuter-train driver Tom Stark (Bacon), who faces both the demise of the railroads and the imminent death of childless, cancer-stricken wife Megan (Harden). In that premise alone there’s enough bathos to flood the San Fernando Valley, without the pileup that ensues when a suicidal single mother dies after parking her car in front of Bacon’s oncoming express liner.

The dead woman’s young son David (Heizer) escapes the crash and ditches his social worker and foster home to trace Tom’s whereabouts. But his anger over his mother’s tragedy evaporates—along with the film’s credibility—when he sets eyes on Tom’s model-train setup. From then on the story plummets into soap-opera territory, as man and boy bond, and Megan talks Tom into illegally sheltering the orphan so she can realize, for however short a time, her wish for a kid.

Technically, it’s a proficient film, but in subject and tone it feels woefully dated, making its lugubrious excesses even less palatable.