Ain't Them Bodies Saints

We start with a young couple in the throes of a spat. She's leaving him and he's begging her to stay. By the time she relents, she also admits that she is pregnant. THEN we see him trying to steal money so their future will be easier. Within the first ten minutes he and a friend have committed a crime and become fugitives. The accomplice is killed, he is captured and goes to jail. Now the story begins.

Our 2013 Seattle International Film Festival audience wasn't familiar with work by director David Lowery, so we went into this with open minds.

We see:

• Casey Affleck ("Gone Baby Gone") as our anti-hero. He does bad things but we can't help but root for him. He writes his lover every day and plots to escape prison.
• Rooney Mara ("The Social Network") is his sweetheart, raising their little girl by herself in a sleepy, lazy Texas town.
• Keith Carradine ("Cowboys and Aliens" but many of us have loved him since "Nashville") is the father of the dead accomplice. He runs a general store in that little town and tends to hold a grudge.
• Ben Foster ("3:10 to Yuma" 2007) is a local lawman. He has a major crush on that pretty woman with the darling daughter and brings her an undersized guitar for her third birthday.

The gloomy soundtrack feeds our sense of foreboding; much of the action takes place at night, so not only are WE confused, but the characters are a bit muddled as well.

This will probably be R-rated when the MPAA takes a look at it; I have no idea where they came up with the name for this film. Which brings me to another observation: if you have ANY sort of hearing loss, you will probably do well to see this in a theater that provides closed captions or wait for the DVD. So far there is no preview to attach, sorry.