The director Martin Davidson cleverly opens the film with a panning shot that symbolically portrays the notion of Joey’s aimlessness, as a cowboy rides across a vast prairie with large hills in the background.  Smoothly the camera flows to the left, as Joey’s persona appears on the screen.  He is telling a small group of cowboys a story from Tahiti, but these men do not understand the point of his story, which furthers the notion that Joey is a unique individual with lofty and continuously shifting dreams.  However, Joey’s dreams are all about to crash when a letter arrives that seems to have been all over the United States in the search for him.  With a blank stare Joey begins to grasp the content of the letter, as someone is getting married – his wife.

After a long drive back home, a disgruntled Joey first visits his friend Pinky (Jeff Perry) in order to get his bearings on the situation.  It has been a long time since they met, and Pinky wants to share with Joey about his successes such as a child, a promotion, and a dream car.  But Joey brushes it all off, as he quickly asks Pinky about his wife’s wedding situation and how he could have missed it.  Quickly, yet nicely, Pinky drops the bomb on Joey and tells him that she has divorced him and now wants to get married.  As the story unfolds, it reveals that Joey has been traveling the world while working odd jobs, as his wife and daughter have been stranded away from Joey’s search for something better.  It has been a lengthy solitude for his wife Chris (Sissy Spacek) who even breaks down the solitude over the last 12 years in days, which makes it obvious that he has neglected her.  Joey also has a daughter with Chris whose upbringing he has nearly completely missed, which would make most people feel a little irritated with him.

Despite Joey’s selfish preoccupation with the search for something, it is hard to be angry with him, as his awareness is much similar with that of an irresponsible child who does not truly understands what he does that hurts others.  Joey is also a very nice and polite person, which emerges whenever he meets people in the film.  These conflicting concepts of friendliness and selfishness presents an interesting character study that Davidson’s film provides through Petersen’s performance.  The supporting cast including Sissy Spacek accentuates Joey’s egocentric behaviors, which brings forth both his positive and negative characteristics. It is also interesting to see how he rationalizes his own self-centered behaviors.  Nonetheless, it is with sadness that the viewer will see how his daughter is caught between him and a traditional family lifestyle with a father figure in the home.

The character development and the persona of Joey are rather stimulating.  Yet, the film fails to notice its own weakness, as it does not have any distinct discord. Maybe, it is to enhance Joey’s indifference.  However, it makes the film feel unimportant, and might loose some viewer’s attention when it gives insufficient effort to portray issues such as love, freedom, and family.  The lack of meaning hurts the cinematic experience, as it does not reach above other films with a similar theme.

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COUNTRY

USA

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