Little Odessa

REVIEW
This brooding, pungent exploration of familial loyalties and personal isolation is Gray's astonishing directorial debut. Roth is arresting as Joshua, hit man for the Russian mafia, whose profession has estranged him from his Russian Jewish family; particularly his father (Schell), who is watching his wife (Redgrave) die of a brain tumor. Like his brother, the younger son Reuben (Furlong) is caught between ancestral custom and assimilation into American culture; and Joshua, who kills without thought or hesitation, is in some ways an icon of that assimilation. Thoughtful and deliberate direction guides uniformly remarkable performances through this haunting examination of the painful human longing to make contact.