Sometimes an act of mercy is also a leap of faith, or at least of hope. Writer-director Hedges’ dysfunctional-family comedy-melodrama is about the risk we take offering a second chance when it isn’t the second, third, or even fourth. Oliver Platt and Patricia Clarkson play the longsuffering suburban parents of troubled April (Katie Holmes), whose offer to host her family for Thanksgiving at her Manhattan apartment is a half-baked bid for redemption. So much hangs on this reunion—yet the odds of disaster are great. The powerful upshot: try again anyway.
—Steven D. Greydanus
Arts & Faith Lists:
2016 Top 25 Mercy Films — #22