John Sayles carves a large slice of sociology out of the Florida coast, similar in size to his slices in City of Hope and Lone Star. The blacks, the whites, the developers, the sticks-in-the-mud. Their dreams, their disillusionment, their desperation, their secrets, their scars, their villainy, their integrity, their humor -- in sum, their humanity. The scenes are well crafted, if a bit stiff and finicky, and the long slow succession of them is somewhat unmodulated and monotoned. (Nowhere as melodramatic as the comparable material in A Flash of Green, by the cinematic bard of Florida, Victor Nuñez.) You can imagine the actors would have felt flattered to be asked to take part, flattered to be taken for representatives of humanity. Edie Falco, Timothy Hutton, Angela Bassett, Bill Cobbs, and Jane Alexander have especially good reason to feel that way. Mary Steenburgen, as the driving force behind Delrona Beach's annual Buccaneer Days ("They don't realize how difficult it is to invent a tradition"), has the least reason. With James McDaniel, Tom Wright, Gordon Clapp, Mary Alice, Miguel Ferrer, Ralph Waite. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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