Hockey player returns to hometown to reconnect with his two brothers and old dad. Prince Edward Island is the beautiful location. Susan Rodgers directed. The score is guitars and folk lyrics. The mom died by the father's rage. The boys remember how they had to hide from their dad. He was a violent drunk. A singer girl from their Highschool days lives next to one brother who is in love with her. She says she had a son. He died? She's part of their family. A younger brother has a wife whose pregnant. The town embraces the returning son.

I always feel good after a Canadian film.

Interesting characters, beautiful setting, well written.

This is a gorgeous movie, and the PEI locations create wonderful atmosphere, and it's worth watching just for this. The cast give worthy performances, too.

The soundtrack is solid too, although I found the use of songs somewhat distracting - I am not sure if it's because the lyrics were taking me out of the moment, or if the tempos didn't jive with what my brain was expecting. It may highlight an underlying concern with the structure of the film.

I enjoyed watching this, so I don't want this criticism to come off too harshly. There is a big story here with lots of backstory, and a bunch of characters that are important in it - so there are lots of ways this story could be told, and from a variety of perspectives. But the way this story is structured didn't help my empathize with the characters perhaps as much as it should have, as I felt oddly detached from everyone in the family right up to the conclusion.

The scenario is setup quickly for us, and very early on the family is reunited. We quickly learn that something in their past has driven a wedge between them, but what and why is revealed very slowly to the audience. VERY slowly. Which means that we have a lot of angst-filled character exchanges and we, the audience, are confused bystanders unable to relate to what is motivating the characters interactions with one another.

I feel the scene structure probably would have worked better for a novel, where we have access to more of the internal narrative.

So while it's not a story problem necessarily, it dilutes in the effectiveness in my opinion. Pretty much everything we need to understand is eventually revealed, but I don't think the finale was as cathartic as the soundtrack makes me feel they were shooting for.

I am not a hockey afficionado, and the hockey scenes worked adequately for me. I see that serious hockey fans are being quite critical here - I think that is unjustified. This isn't a movie about hockey any more than it is a movie about fishing. This is a drama about a family with a troubled past, and one of them happened to be a hockey player, which provides the character with the necessary local notoriety required for the story.

A nice effort, and I would suggest it is well worth watching for the performances, and for those that just love to see PEI on screen. I would love to see more movies like this.