At one stage Ed Burns was a real star of indie cinema - good looking, charismatic, gravelly voice and with something to stay. He's still around, still good looking and charismatic with a gravelly voice (he's carved himself a niche as the wrong man in romantic comedies), but he seems to have said all he has to say - a progression you can see from this collection.
"The Brothers McMullen" is terrific - warm and funny look at some Irish American brothers on Long Island, battling with the ghost of their father, commitment issues with women, temptations from the wrong girl. It's very well done, with a lot of heart, and the magic is on the page.
"She's the One" is pretty good too. It's about Irish brothers, only two of them, with the key difference of seeing Dad. We don't see Mum, which might be a mistake - or maybe it was the lack of a third brother, because it does feel "padded" in places, with too many jokes about one of the brothers possibly being gay. But it has a great romantic plot with the cab driver and his customer, and a good theme (i.e. the importance of compromise).
"No Looking Back" is bad. Dull, sluggish, devoid of humour or warmth. It consists of a bunch of working class people sitting around being working class drinking beer. The plot would gobble up maybe five minutes of TV drama - girl unsure of marrying current beau is tempted by old flame. There's no decent reveal (she had an abortion! Can't have kids), no particularly memorable capturing of a time and place. You keep waiting for someone to rob a bank, fall pregnant, come out of the closet, anything. But it doesn't. It's as if Burns said everything he wanted to say with his first two films - maybe his first, but reheated it for his second - then completely and utterly ran out. Still, that may be unfair and I will try to check out some of his subsequent films to find out.
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