Review: Sleepwalking

RECOMMENDED
Zac Stanford and William Maher, screenwriter and director of “The Chumscrubber,” get strong performances in this wintry western tale of an unfit mother, her 11-year-old daughter, her foul-tempered father and her beat-down brother. Charlize Theron, who played a single working mother in “In the Valley of Elah,” plays the messed-up Joleen (as well as produced). Her latest boyfriend got busted for weed, so she crashes with her younger brother James (Nick Stahl). That he rides a bike to his job on a city road crew tells us something more than a driver’s license is missing in his past. Joleen’s daughter Tara (AnnaSophia Robb, who played creepy kids in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “The Reaping”) cannot take her mom’s impulsive lifestyle. When Joleen scolds: “I don’t need this kind of shit from you right now, Tara,” she gets sassed back: “What kind of shit do you need from me, mom?” Joleen drives off in the middle of the night with a new lover in his semi. Trying to parent Tara, James loses his job and apartment. Tara goes to foster care, then hits the road with James. They seek refuge on the Utah farm of his monstrous father, played by Dennis Hopper (who did dads in “Out of the Blue” and “Rumble Fish”). Long suppressed rage erupts to fix a chronic family crisis. The emotional vectors in this indie, shot in austere Saskatchewan, are a tad schematic: the camera marks a horizontal axis in the opening shot tracking across a road; the closing shot traces a vertical axis by craning above the road. Fate is a crosshairs. With Deborra-Lee Furness and Woody Harrelson. 100m. Anamorphic widescreen. (Bill Stamets)