In this wrenching saga of drug dealing and drug addiction in middle America, there was a concerted effort to convey a realistic environment.

Set in the hardscrabble world of Leeville, Illinois and based on a true story, Patsy McCartle is struggling to make ends meet as a single mom. She and her two boys, Jason and Kevin, were left to go it alone when their father Jack was a lineman and died on the job.

Desperate to care for her youngsters, especially little Kevin who is an asthmatic, Patsy begins work with her friend Carey in making deliveries for a local drug dealer. She becomes hooked on meth and spirals into a near catatonic state when forced to confront her addiction. Through drugs, Patsy has unwittingly made life much worse for her two boys.

The filmmakers juggled the realism of Patsy's addiction and painful period of withdrawal followed by her participation in a sting operation to nab the contacts of the local drug kingpin, Hopkins. The location filming in winter added to the grim realities confronting Patsy.

Diane Keaton was excellent in the leading role, and the two young actors playing the boys were superb. The closing captions sought to offer a rosy picture of the future of Patsy and the boys as they enter a witness protection program.

The impression was given that the drug situation was cleaned up in Leeway. Yet for middle America, the tragedy of methamphetamine addiction has continued for decades after the making of this well-crafted drama.

Diane Keaton plays a widowed mother of two young boys (one of whom has serious asthma) working odd jobs but falling behind on the bills; after running into an old friend who seems to have lots of money on hand, Keaton goes on her first drug-run. Dealing Crystal Meth seems like a good solution for awhile, until the local drug lord has Keaton become a partaker to prove her worth. Serious subject matter is pitched too high, with jittery Keaton flaky and flighty, but without her charming edge (she's a walking nervous breakdown). The personalities of her two kids are unconvincing (as is their general dialogue and relationship with their mom),and the supporting characters as well never take shape. TV-movie has such a fuzzy narrative that I wasn't even sure which state it was supposed to take place in (I believe North Carolina, though it was filmed in Canada),and Keaton begins the movie as a cleaning woman but never returns to that job again. The tone of the film shifts jarringly in the second-half from character study to melodrama, a change which doesn't suit anyone here particularly well.

****SPOILERS**** The usually high-class and sophisticated Diane Keaton plays Pasty McCartle a cleaning lady and waitress holding down two jobs to pay the bills as well as paying for her asthmatic son Kevin's, Colin Roberts, medical expenses that's just about financially breaking her. It's when Pasty's girlfriend Cerrie Kilmer, Lynda Boyd, a full blown meth addict gets her to be a carrier of crystal meth for local dealer Hopkins, Michael Rooker, her already miserable life goes from bad to worse.

As Pasty is soon to find out who at first was making a nice dollar working for Hopkins that soon pays all her bills she's then forced by Hopkins to smoke the crystal meth for in order to get her addicted to it where he can, by providing her with the stuff, keep her under his control. Pasty finds out that being addicted to meth is a lot worse then selling or pushing it! As she ends up blowing all the money she made, which were in the thousands of dollars, working for Hopking. It's Pasty's older son Jason, Michael Seater, who realizes just how screwed up in the head she really is and tries to get her off the meth cold turkey style that almost causes her to drop dead from a heart attack.

***SPOILERS*** It's when Pasty reached rock bottom with her two sons about to leave her that she throws in the towel and reluctantly agrees to work for this DEA and local police to get the goods on Hopkins and put him behind bars. Things don't work out as planned with Hopkins getting the jump on the police by knocking off Pasty's friend and fellow meth addict Carrie, who was needed as a witness against him, as well as her meth snorting and blowing friends. That's when Hopkins finds that they've been holding out on him by skimming off the top and using the cash to buy crystal meth off a rival drug dealer. The final straw was when Hopkins kidnapped Pasty's two sons holding them hostage to keep her from informing on him as well as secretly taping, with a wire, his business transactions!

Hopkings ended up getting the worst of it when Pasty, not caring anymore to what's to happened to her, raided his secret crystal meth factory shotgun thus making things in hand making it really hot for him. Glad to be taken into custody by the police Hopkins was a lot better off then if Pasty got a chance to get him in the cross-hair of her shotgun and blow him straight to kingdom come. P.S were told that because of Pasty working with the police and DEA all but one of the 48 members of Hopkins drug gang ended up being convicted with her and her two sons put in the witness protection program which they still, now after some 15 years, are in today.