Barnes & Noble

In an era when family dramas often feel canned or recycled, You Can Count on Me is a breath of fresh air. Set in a small town in upstate New York, playwright Kenneth Lonergan's film debut is a lithe, generous take on various traumas of the familial, romantic, sexual, and communicative sort. Beginning with a short prologue showing a husband and wife crashing into an oncoming semi, the movie shuttles forward immediately into the present-day lives of Sammy and Terry, the two children orphaned by the collision. Big sister Sammy (Laura Linney), now a single mother, still lives in the family home that she and Terry (Mark Ruffalo) inherited, working in a bank, going to church regularly and raising her son, Rudy (Rory Culkin), as well as she can. Terry, now a twentysomething drifter, blows back into town, initially to borrow money, but then decides to stay for a while to hang out with his nephew and help fix up the house. All the actors turn in superb performances, particularly Linney, who received an Oscar nomination for her moving portrayal of the conflicted, immensely likable Sammy. The characters are well served by Lonergan's script, which sympathetically excavates rationalizations without making judgments on their shortcomings. By zeroing in on their small, but intense interactions -- Sammy's clashes with her stiff boss (Matthew Broderick in corporate-zombie mode), Sammy's ongoing harangue of Terry to find a purpose in life, Rudy's negativity and blind faith in his missing father -- Lonergan proves himself a smart, plaintive writer and a director of tremendous depth. Quiet and unassuming, You Can Count on Me has an emotional power that resonates long after the movie is over. Eddy Crouse

All Movie Guide

Kenneth Lonergan, the co-screenwriter for Analyze This (1999), makes his directorial debut with this sensitive portrait of a pair of grown siblings. Sammy and Terry Prescott (Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo) were orphaned as children after their parents were killed in a car accident. Since then, the two have taken drastically divergent paths. Sammy is a single mother who leads a quiet, stable life in a small town in upstate New York. A fiercely protective mother, she shields her young son Rudy (Rory Culkin) from all information about his absentee father. She is also involved with Bob (Jon Tenney), a well-meaning but less-than-exciting mate, both in and out of bed. Terry, by contrast, is a troubled, self-destructive soul eking out a nomadic existence. When he abandons his pregnant girlfriend to borrow money from his sister, Sammy finds her stable world disrupted. A bond soon develops between Terry and Rudy; over the objections of his mother, Terry takes the tyke fishing and shares old family secrets. Meanwhile, Terry's presence inspires Sammy to break out of her quiet life. This film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. Jonathan Crow

Boston Globe

Satisfying in every respect, it's a piece of blue-collar chamber music, never treating the characters cheaply, allowing them a complex entwinement of emotions. Jay Carr

Product Details

• UPC: 097363389446
• Source: PARAMOUNT
• Region Code: 1
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital Surround, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English
• Time: 1:50:00
• Sales Rank: 16,646

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Election/You Can Count on Me

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