Remember when Johnny Depp used to make good films and Michael Stipe used to make good music?  At some point over the last couple of years, the two seemed to undergo some sort of swap.  Depp has struck out with roles in awful films like The Astronaut’s Wife and The Ninth Gate, while playing guitar for a band called P (which, ironically, has a song about Stipe).  Meanwhile, Stipe produced three of 1999’s best films (Being John Malkovich, American Movie and The Limey), but R.E.M.’s sales figures have plummeted.

Stipe has also produced Spring Forward – an action fan’s worst nightmare. There’s nothing a knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing Van Damme fan hates more than a character study, and that’s just what they’ll get here.  But Forward is so much more than a film heavy in dialogue and deficient in superfluous action.  In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a picture that bests Forward in the arenas of acting, directing and writing.  It is clearly one of the year’s best films, but, sadly, the lack of a major distributor will likely hamper any shot at well-deserved year-end accolades.

Already the winner of numerous film festival awards, Forward is set over the course of one year in a small Connecticut town.  The film is comprised of seven sections that focus on two Parks & Recreation Department workers.  Murph (Ned Beatty, Cookie’s Fortune) has been married for nearly half a century and is less than a year away from retirement.  Paul (Liev Schreiber, Scream 3) is a young high school dropout who has just been released from prison.

As you would expect, their relationship doesn’t start off on the right foot, but as the film progresses, the two men begin to open up to each other despite the differences in their age and backgrounds.  Surprising parts of their lives surface, and Murph and Paul begin to bond as New England’s seasons change around them.  By the time the closing credits roll, the seasons have made a complete arc, as has the relationship between Murph and Paul.

Although it sounds like it, Forward isn’t an Odd Couple ripoff.  Murph and Paul are two real, down-to-Earth blue-collar guys, and the film doesn’t shove heavy-handed moral lessons or bonding crap down your throat either (otherwise it would be like another Forward – as in Pay It).  In a film this finely written, cinematography hardly matters, but Forward is handsomely photographed by Terry Stacey, from television’s hastily cancelled medical drama Wonderland.

Forward is an astonishing debut from writer/director Tom Gilroy, who previously played bit parts in a bunch of independent films.  Some people may have big problems with Gilroy’s style, which leaves a lot of unanswered questions instead of neatly wrapping up every loose end. Murph and Paul meet various people while painting fences and fixing gazebos, but once the scenes end, those characters disappear from the film.  It’s a bold move, especially when you consider that some of those roles are played by some pretty established actors – like Ian Hart (Wonderland), Campbell Scott (The Impostors) and Peri Gilpin (Frasier). But this technique allows viewers to concentrate on the fantastically realistic performances given by Beatty and Schreiber.

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for adult language, sex talk and some drug content