A Croatian man—let’s call him Drazen (The Sopranos’ John Ventimiglia)—pulls himself out of the Hudson, screaming at the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty. We then toggle between finding out why this smooth-talking gambler ended up swimming in the drink in the first place, and how this late-hour dip affects the fates of his fellow off-track-betting buddies, a Nigerian cabbie (Babs Olusanmokun) and a Venezuelan short-order cook (Kevin Corrigan). An adaptation of Mike Batistick’s Off Broadway play, this stagy character study about immigrants living off the crumbs of the American Dream revels in cut-rate street smartness. Then comes the third act, at which point the film moves from obvious message-mongering to the beating of a post–9/11 dead horse.
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