Catching up with the past

Though attractively shot around the gorgeous Yellowstone National Park, Lasse Hallstrom's film about a fractured family is so inert that you wonder why the director takes so long to tell an easily anticipated story.

The starry cast do their best with practically nothing. Robert Redford plays Einar, a curmudgeonly rancher who, because he was drunk at the time, failed to rescue his hired hand, Mitch (Morgan Freeman), from a marauding grizzly bear. He now looks after the wounded man and regularly visits the grave of his son, killed in a car accident.

The car was driven by the son's wife, Jean (Jennifer Lopez), who turns up at the ranch with her young daughter trying to escape from her latest abusive boyfriend (Damien Lewis). They are all forced to confront old wounds and eventually do, with Jean and the local sheriff (Josh Lucas) finding romance together.

It's slow paced and so determined to be sensitive that it makes you want to scream, particularly as you know full well that Hallstrom will provide a happy ending. You can't criticise the acting. But the subtleties of this tale are never more than skin deep and the direction not nearly tough enough to convince.

An Unfinished Life
Cert: 12A