An obsessed beautician heads for DC when JFK is assassinated. Along the way, she loses her husband, but finds something within herself she never knew was there; courage and fortitude.

Fraught with dangers only our parents remember, this film shows you what the US was like back in the late 50's, early 60's. It also teaches us that we haven't changed that much, as a nation, in the last 50 years.

Michelle Pfeiffer, Dennis Haysbert, and Stephanie McFadden endear with their honesty in this gripping drama by Jonathan Kaplan (Project X, the Firm, and Bad Girls). The performances are heartening and lends us hope that things genuinely CAN improve in the future. Not necessarily that they will, but that it is possible, should we apply our hearts to the problem.

This is a great film, though you have to be in the right mood for it.

It rates an 8.2/10 from...

the Fiend :.

Can't believe that this is another movie that I find the legendary Roger Ebert's review to be totally worthless. The performance are uniformly great particularly Michelle Pfeiffer and Dennis Haysbert. The story is involving and ultimately moving. The little girl's almost numb with abuse and fear, shock is well portrayed. The story is believable, and the ending happily, optimistic. A shame that the film is comparatively unknown. See it, if you like something more substantial than a simple chick flick, or the latest blood and gore offering. A movie for people with an adult mentality. It once again proves that Michelle Pfeiffer was perhaps the most under appreciated actress of her time.

In 1963 Dallas, a Jackie Kennedy-obsessed beautician hopes to travel by bus to JFK's funeral, but gets involved instead with a troubled black man and his estranged little girl. Handsome production, nice details, but a curiously minor film that never quite kicks into gear. Occasionally, the way the racial prejudices are shown--from both black and white characters--is heavy-handed, though director Jonathan Kaplan does subtle work as well, performing a nimble balancing act while the screenplay works overtime being "heated" and "emotional". Michelle Pfeiffer's performance is alternately grating, unconventional, sweet and perplexing; we don't get to know her Lurene too well, and the actress has to rely on shtick for some of her major scenes; Dennis Haysbert as her traveling companion is a tower of quiet strength, and his handsome, aw-shucks smile isn't over-used. The plot is wrapped up neatly at the end, a tricky feat since the finale takes place some 12 months from the rest of the story--a gimmick that doesn't always work, but here it satisfies the viewer by showing lives changed and what might lay ahead. Potentially a heady mix of race-relations and something even deeper (and no-less complicated): forbidden love. Yet the picture somehow whittles down these complex issues into a road-movie formula. ** from ****