Least Among Saints

The results are too predictable.

The forced plotting and Lifetime movie-style tearjerking are a chore, and commercial prospects look narrow, but if this is indeed a good-faith effort to preach beyond the choir, it deserves plaudits.

Least Among Saints is a heartfelt if not exactly heartwarming story of two wounded males, but despite top-notch performances from all the leads, it never really brings anything new to a story that's already overly familiar.

Though both actors deliver performances more credible than the plot that frames them, their authenticity only highlights the script's affection for improbable coincidences and an ending even Garry Marshall might consider too pat.

Least Among Saints has the strained feel of a basic cable television movie, with modest production values to match.

There's nothing but skin-deep warmth to Least Among Saints, a film in which any authority figure who can't magically sober up and play surrogate daddy for a spell is treated as either a meddler or a well-meaning, do-nothing skeptic.

As a portrait of a self-pitying drunk's wet dream of inexplicable atonement, it's fairly effective, but as a story meant to take place on some rational version of planet Earth, it's utterly hopeless.