Parents' Guide to Laws of Man

This action thriller has a good cast and a promising start, as two suit-wearing city slickers try to navigate a deadly backcountry territory, but it goes unforgivably haywire in the final stretch. Written and directed by Phil Blattenberger, Laws of Man feels confident right off the bat, as the two marshals, looking like they walked right out of Reservoir Dogs, drive so deeply off the grid that their radio signal disappears. They have a tense standoff with a grimy, intimidating fellow named "Crash Mooncalf" (character actor Richard Brake), which could have been its own movie, before moving on to the main plot. Their interactions with Graham Greene (as the sheriff), Harvey Keitel (as a preacher), and Forrie J. Smith (as a man with a warning), are tense and fascinating, with a minimum of the expected "you ain't from around here, are you?" stuff. Mulroney seems to relish his role as an ultra-nasty villain, and the two heroes are interestingly conflicted, constantly bouncing back and forth between the way they should be doing things and they way they could be doing things. (They're both war veterans with obviously untreated PTSD.)

Then, at the three-quarter mark, everything goes tumbling off a cliff. The last 25 minutes or so of the movie are such a poor match for the previous 75 minutes that Laws of Man more than wears out its welcome. And all the confidence is gone, too. The writing and the performances tumble off the cliff with the rest of the film. (Not even Keith Carradine can save this section.) It's certainly OK for movies to be surprising, but not all surprises are good.