Rails & Ties (2007)

Rails u0026 Ties: Directed by Alison Eastwood. With Kevin Bacon, Marcia Gay Harden, Miles Heizer, Marin Hinkle. A deadly collision between a train and car lead to an unlikely bond between the train engineer and a young boy who escapes the carnage.

“As u0026quot;Rails and Tiesu0026quot; opens, locomotive engineer Tom Stark (Kevin Bacon) is having the kind of day most of us wouldnu0026#39;t wish on our own worst enemy; his 41-year-old wife, Megan (Marcia Gay Harden), has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and a mentally ill young mother has committed suicide by parking her car directly in the path of the train he is conducting. As is customary in such cases, Tom is put on temporary suspension pending an investigation of the crash. He also has to come to terms with the imminent loss of his wife, who laments the fact that the couple never had a child and that she will die without ever having truly lived. Meanwhile, the dead womanu0026#39;s 11-year-old son, Davey (Miles Heizer), who has miraculously escaped the tragedy (it was intended as a murder/suicide), seeks Tom out to confront him about running over his mother, but stays to find a surrogate family of sorts with Tom and Megan – with all the messy legal ramifications that that entails.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eNeedless to say, given the plot as outlined above, u0026quot;Rails and Tiesu0026quot; isnu0026#39;t exactly designed to be a passel of upbeat fun. Still, those with a taste for serious, thoughtful, humanistic dramas will find much to cherish in this film. The Micky Levy screenplay focuses, primarily, on the complex marital relationship of Tom and Megan, as they struggle with why Tom has never been able to fully commit himself to either the marriage or the prospect of being a father.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eGiven all the various tragic elements that meet up in this single drama, the movie could easily have become awash in sentimentality and bathos. Instead, the subtlety and restraint of Alison Eastwoodu0026#39;s direction, along with the richly understated performances (especially by Harden), keep the suds from rising too much to the surface. The result is a movie that deals authentically and truthfully with some highly unorthodox and rather touchy subject matter. u0026quot;Rails and Tiesu0026quot; may pluck on the heartstrings a little too freely at times, but the tears and throat lumps it elicits are, for the most part, honestly earned.”