Guilt and regret consume a snowy rural Colorado town after a three-year-old boy dies while under the neglectful care of his father (Dekker), in this turgid Amerindie approximation of The Sweet Hereafter. Affairs, alcoholism and anger at faulty child safety seats all run rampant, but given that the blame for the movie's central crime falls squarely on one character, director Gaby Dellal's attempts at moral complexity and social commentary prove futile. No matter how sensitive the orchestral-string score gets, the film can't locate the bone-deep sense of tragedy of Leslie Schwartz's novel---it just keeps belching out empty, grief-stricken histrionics devoid of insight.
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