Charming and brutal

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It's OK. The "Willard Hope Technique," whereby someone trying to write cuts newspaper articles out at random and assembles them to create a plot for a novel gets a young fan of Hope into trouble when he tries it for himself. The technique recalls Harry Stephen Keeler's "webwork" which is essentially the same. Sort of a poorer version of Three Days of the Condor, where someone stumbles across a real plot.

When you start something, finish it. That is the mantra spoken often in this movie. While the story starts slow, it builds towards an exciting end. The characters, both major and minor, are well drawn, complete with personality quirks, that add depth and interest to the story. Alexis Denisof, in his film debut, does a great job portraying Tony's innocent exuberance, and determination to start what he has finished. This film gets better every time I watch it.

One of those movies where you have to wait until the last 30 minutes to appreciate the first hour. In other words: good plot on the whole, but slow to start. I found the film to be interesting only when it became obvious that Tony, the young would-be writer, is willing to risk a lot in order to assume the freedom of being "non-conformist", which is, in his own words, one of the main roles of an artist in any society, and which often means assuming a real risk, even in the US.