Milk and Honey

Smart and surprising.

Dexterously scripted, darkly humorous.

Maggio and his stars find some unexpected truths in a familiar tale.

Has just enough quirks and unexpected shocks along the way to keep things interesting.

This 2003 drama suffers from a heavy narrative hand, as a series of ironic coincidences creates a tiny, hermetically sealed New York City, but the contrivances are overwhelmed by the intimacy and immediacy of the human encounters.

The lives of three deeply unhappy New Yorkers crisscross in unexpected ways in writer-director Joe Maggio's uneven but strangely affecting film.

Milk and Honey is the kind of nightmare-in-a-box you might expect if Neil LaBute remade Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" on a shoestring.