‘Angels Crest’ features an impressive cast telling a sad, sad story

Director Gaby Dellal and screenwriter Catherine Trieschmann have crafted a perfect and resoundingly compelling drama with their new film Angels Crest. Featuring a towering performance by Thomas Dekker as a young father who faces every parent’s nightmare, the movie unfolds methodically and always with a bent toward reality. The ensemble cast that surrounds Dekker is equally important to the movie’s success.

Dekker plays Ethan, a young man with a young son named Nate (Ameko Eks Mass Carroll). From very early on it becomes clear that although the odds are stacked against ethan, he’s a good father, just a little inexperienced. Nate’s mother (Lynn Collins) is an alcoholic who stays mostly out of the kid’s life, so Ethan needs to fill the void.

One morning father and son head off into the woods, even though there’s a snowstorm headed for the town of Angels Crest, a small hamlet that hugs the Rocky Mountains. With his son sleeping peacefully in the backseat and the heat turned up high in the truck, Ethan decides to have a look around the woods. When the father spots some elk a few yards away, he tracks them for a bit, leaving his son in the vehicle.

This lapse in judgment proves fatal. We learn later that Nate wakes up and heads out into the snowstorm, perhaps to look for daddy.

The drama behind Angels Crest is all precipitated by this horrible situation involving Ethan and his son. The police begin asking questions. The district attorney files charges. The townsfolk come down either in favor or against Ethan and his actions.

The movie features many characters and some nice performances. From Mira Sorvino as the owner of a local diner to Jeremy Piven as the district attorney, Angels Crest has put together talented performers and given them some meaty roles. Kate Walsh and Elizabeth McGovern play a couple in town who disagree about Ethan’s fate. Even Nate’s mother, previously out of the picture and drunk all the time, chimes in with her take on Ethan’s parental skills.

As the storm blows around Ethan, he tries his best to step through the process of grieving. From burying his son to facing the charges of recklessness in court, he realizes that his entire life has changed and his son is gone forever.

Dekker offers a stirring performance. He holds the anguish and pain of his son’s loss on his face, working his way from anger to depression to resignation, all within a few minutes. He can’t fathom his life without his son, and he begins to replay the incident in his mind, over and over again. What went wrong? How did his son get out of the carseat?

Watching Ethan plunge into madness and acceptance is never joyful. There’s very little comedy in Angels Crest. It earns its billing as a dark, dark drama. By highlighting what can go wrong in a split second for a mother and father, the film allows audience members to experience grief through the eyes of these characters. Although the loss of Nate is very personal to Ethan, it might take the support of a community to help him endure the ordeal.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• Angels Crest

• 2011

• Directed by Gaby Dellal

• Written by Catherine Trieschmann; based on the book by Leslie Schwartz

• Starring Thomas Dekker, Lynn Collins, Elizabeth McGovern, Joseph Morgan, Jeremy Piven, Mira Sorvino and Kate Walsh

• Running time: 93 minutes

• Rated R for language and some sexual content

• Rating: