It is predictable, it has a lot of clichés, it doesn't aspire to be even nearer to what would be called a great film, or even a good one - or even a hit -, but its dialogues are fine and truthful, and reveal an experienced knowledge of a writer's craft and soul and suffering.
As the comment above put it, it's a film of real people with real problems, apparently common and minor problems to the viewer who expects to extract some titillation out of films - the characters here are not involved in intrigues, in hiding a murder or escape from it -, but problems hard enough for those involved. As we learn somewhere: there is no order of difficulty in problems, one is not "harder" or "bigger" than another. They are all the same.
The great psychologist Viktor Frankl, who spent four years in a concentration camp, tells in "Man's Search for Meaning", in an almost candid way, that his terrible sufferings there at the camp doesn't amount to anything bigger than anyone's. He makes a perfect analogy, and with the most frightening element an inmate of a concentration camp could think of: "A man's suffering is similar to the behaviour of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the 'size' of human suffering is absolutely relative".
Well, it seems a lot of thinking to draw from such an unpretentious film, but I think in that resides its merits. Keitel's outstanding performance adds a lot to it, it's on a level much higher than the whole production. It's amazing how great actors can have some of their great moments in lesser films, as Keitel here, or as Morgan Freeman unique, out-of-bounds performance in "Street Wise".
