2000 / 109 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Jason Jones

So there I was. Sunday night and there’s nothing better to do than watch “The Princess Bride”. Not that, that’s a bad thing. In fact, it’s a very good thing. So much so, that after I watched it for the first time, I watched it again. Only this time with the William Goldman commentary track on the DVD turned on. I had to do this, because Goldman rules. He’s a cranky yet humorous veteran of the Hollywood trenches. He pulls no punches and, for this reason, I listen when the man speaks.

What does all this have to do with “You Can Count On Me” you ask? Well, we all have our motivations when it comes to making the ultimate decision of choosing a movie to watch. For me, it can often be a simple thing like seeing a picture of Kevin Costner, walking away from a flaming building, with a pissed off expression on his face that gets me to watch a movie (For those interested, this image resides on the back of the DVD for “3000 Miles to Graceland”).

Usually I say something along the lines of: “Look at him! He’s pissed!!” and moments later I can be found at the checkout with the film in hand. This same concept applies to Goldman as you soon shall see. During the aforementioned commentary track he discusses the benefits of “word of mouth” advertising in relation to the success of “The Princess Bride” once it reached video store shelves. In doing so he mentions the fact that he felt “You Can Count On Me” was the best film of 2000 and that he would tell this to anyone who would listen. When this film was in theaters, I wanted to see it, but never managed to find my way into a seat. Now with Goldman making this grand statement, I felt it would be idiotic of me to put off the viewing any longer.

So here I am. Fresh off the viewing and I can safely say that Goldman’s reputation is intact. It is a great film. Not quite “best of the year” material, but most definitely “top ten” material.

It is a great film, because it is driven by it’s characters rather than it’s plot, which is no small feat in this day and age of the contrived nonsensical plots that populate the majority of the screens at your local multiplex. It is the story of a sister Sammy (Laura Linney), her son Rudy (Rory Culkin) and her brother Terry (Mark Ruffalo). Sammy likes to think that her life is pretty well ordered. She goes to church, maintains a steady job, and tries to always be there for her son. Terry drifts through life, from town to town, with little to show for his efforts. They were orphaned at an early age and these are the paths they have chosen to take in their parentless lives.

It has been ages since Sammy has heard from her brother, when one day he writes her and shortly thereafter returns to his hometown. The reunion between brother and sister is a heart wrenching one that shows that these two have shared a lot of difficult times together. Sammy quickly realizes that Terry has only come back to borrow money from her, which infuriates her because she wants nothing more than to have him stay at the house for awhile. She gets her wish eventually, but, as the old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.”

Before long Sammy finds that Terry is inadvertently placing her son in undesirable circumstances, which makes her realize that she has to decide between rehabilitating her brother and the welfare of her son. As all this is going on, she strings along a potential fiancée, while having an affair with her boss (Matthew Broderick). Proving that she is hardly a model of decency for her son or brother.

“You Can Count On Me” proves to be a mesmerizing character study. The relationship between Sammy and Terry is the heart and soul of the film. Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo both deliver powerhouse performances of admirable intensity and emotional fragility in the lead roles. Linney garnered an Oscar nomination for her performance and it’s not hard to see why. Pick just about any scene from the film and you can see this incredible actress take you on an emotional roller coaster in a matter of a few moments. I noticed many times that actor/writer/director Kenneth Lonergan just allowed the camera to rest upon her performance by allowing her reactions to her brother’s words tell the story. The lunchroom scene, early in the film, is just one of a number of perfect demonstrations of what I am talking about. Watch the film and you’ll see what I mean.

For Linney’s performance to work, she had to have an equally strong lead to feed off of and she got that in the form of Mark Ruffalo. I don’t know what this guy has done in the past, but I know you’ll be hearing a lot about him in the future. Just as Linney feeds off of his character, he feeds off of hers. This is one of those wonderful cases where two great performers get on the same wavelength and make one another better in each and every scene. They are so good together that it’s actually hard to believe that they aren’t brother and sister in real life. I’ve heard Ruffalo compared to Marlon Brando by some reviewers for this performance. Personally, I’ve never seen Brando as good as Ruffalo is here. He goes from laughter to tears in mere seconds. This is powerful stuff.

I started this review by discussing how one goes about being motivated to watch a particular film. Sometimes it’s Costner laying waste to gas stations, Dennis Farina uttering a stream of profanity, or William Goldman stating that a film was the best in any given year. In the case of “You Can Count On Me” it was the latter for me. I can only hope the kind words I have given the film will be the motivation you need to discover this wonderful little gem of a film.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2001 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Jason's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.