Long-winding drama with country oldies...

When a social worker gets a little too wrapped up in his client and her dirtbag ex-con hubby comes home, things explode. It's got that made-for-tv feel.

I live in St. Louis. My main complaint is that this film is supposed to be set in St. Louis, and while I did not know this going in, I knew this was not shot in St. Louis, Right away. It really did not look like St. Louis, at all. The buildings, the streets, the casinos, the police cars, even the sunlight did not look like St. Louis. Beyond that I enjoyed it. Shea Wigham was good, Bruce Dern was great. Olivia Munn was good, as was the girl who played her daughter. Grillo always plays a good pompous ahole. The bad guys were a little suspect. St. Louis does not have much of a Mexican/Cartel criminal element. Overall I did like the movie and SPOILER it does have a downer ending. I feel like these types of movies, small independent movies, are rarely at the theaters anymore, so I was happy to see it on the big screen.

Good movie with good acting. Storyline a little boring at times and it didn’t even come close to looking like St. Louis where the movie was supposed to be set. We haven’t had electric street cars since 1966 except the new Delmar area train and that train just started running off and on. But it was still entertaining.

A fun, well acted, well made noir thriller!

Loved the film. Strong message, great action, keeps you on edge start to finish!

Ridiculously and annoyingly bad. I really feel sorry for Grillo, Munn and even Dern (who's been horrible in many other bad movies lately, but was actually good in this one) for having their names attached to this far-fetched ridiculous wannabe crime-drama-thriller pretentious mess. Although Whigham's performance was decent, his character was cringeworthy, laughable, and annoyingly unconvincing. His James Dean wannabe look and demeanor did him zero justice, as did his unrealistic and ridiculous character's attempt to portray a social worker. The casting director needs to get fired for that call, as do the writers. To make matters worse, there were actually three writers that came together to give us this nonsense; a (pulling out a mini-bottle out of thin-air) alcoholic chain-smoking drug-using gun-wielding emotional-baggage-carrying straight-faced low-monotonic dude-too-cool licensed city social worker? It may have worked as a comedic parody, but in this case, it was as I already mentioned, cringeworthy, laughable, and annoyingly unconvincing. Don't even get me started on the massive plot and technical issues. The pacing was so slow with many unnecessary and long winded scenes, that the normally time-flies 91 min runtime felt like almost 3 hours. The screenplay was so dull, static and stale, I couldn't wait to get to the end. Aside from the last 10 mins of (somewhat) action, there were zero thrills in this thriller, and the drama was melodramatic in a soap-opera way. And what was the point of the last 3+ mins of church choir singing? Then right after adding "In the United States, 250,000 children enter the foster care system every year", is an embarrassment to the foster system by portraying Whigham as a "licensed city social worker". What's the point to that message relating to this film? "Hopefully none of those 250,000 children will end up with such an unprofessional and unqualified social worker like Parker" lmao? Adding that statistic doesn't make the film any better, it makes it much worse. One of those writers, Michele Civetta, also directed this mess. Using fish-eye lens and slow-mo scenes is something I'd expect to see in a 5th grade drama class production - from the 90's. His directing overall was amateurish at best, and he failed in directing his cast properly, with the exception of Grillo, who clearly carried his own weight perfectly without any need for cast direction. The score was ok, but the soundtrack was overbearing. I really can't think of anything redeeming about this film, it was such a disappointment. It's a shame so much good talent was wasted in this nonsense. I'm giving this a very generous 4/10, more so out of pity for some of my favorite actors having this mess on their resume.

Gritty drama, Frank Grillo was a complex hero that kept my attention...well done...spot on