P.J.

With the line between what is low/no budget and "Indy" growing wider every day, PJ is a great representation of what true independent film making should be. Made on a shoestring budget by first time director Russ Emanuel, PJ succeeds where many features with ten times the budget fail. Delivering a skillfully shot, brilliantly scored and well acted piece of dramatic entertainment. The only real criticism should be in the screenplay which I felt was a bit too self motivated and had tendencies toward contrived, overly sentimental plot paths rather than establishing rich, dimensional characters that drive the story. This, unfortunately, led to some weak performances from the main character played by John Heard as well as a few of the ancillary, smaller characters. Patricia Rae, Howard Nash and Vincent Pastore, however, pick up the pieces and deliver some significant performances worthy of the accolades that the film has so far garnered. If for nothing else, watch this film for the cinematography by Seth Melnick and the soundtrack by Neil Argo. Both are stellar for the size of the production.