Written by: David Self, based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins & Richard Piers Rayner
Directed by: Sam Mendes
Starring: Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, Tyler Hoechlin, Jennifer Jason Leigh

My Advice: Don't miss it.

Michael Jr. (Hoechlin) doesn't know much about what his father (Hanks) does. All he does know is that their family owes a great deal to an older gentlemen named John Rooney (Newman), who's his dad's boss. Sometimes dad goes out to take care of business for Mr. Rooney, and mom (Leigh) isn't going to talk either. Finally, curiosity (you know what that leads to) gets the better of him and he learns more about his father's occupation than he could ever possible want to...and puts his entire family in harm's way in the process.

Welcome to Sam Mendes' sophomore helming effort, the first being American Beauty, the best film of 1999. I approached this film with some trepidation, as other sophomore outings of recent star directors have not exactly been up to snuff (Nolan, anyone?). I shouldn't have worried. Hanks, wanting to play something a little darker (and having stated in an interview he would have loved the Spacey role in Beauty), is a master of underplaying his hand as a professional killer. Watch him in scenes where he's not, on the surface, doing anything. He has the part nailed--and, as always with Hanks, it's easy to think that he's not working at all. It just looks so effortless.

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