Ponies

A riveting piece of work full of unpleasant characters whom you're glad you've met but never want to see again.

Primarily an actors' showcase, it does at least provide the opportunity for the virtuosic John Ventimiglia (The Sopranos) to strut his stuff in a well-deserved leading role.

Never distinguishes itself as engaging cinema apart from the main character's vile charisma and a few dynamic dialogue sequences.

Nick Sandow's Ponies can claim the not negligible achievement of bringing one of the more irritatingly objectionable characters in recent cinema to the screen.

An adaptation of Mike Batistick's Off Broadway play, this stagy character study about immigrants living off the crumbs of the American Dream revels in cut-rate street smartness. Then comes the third act, at which point the film moves from obvious message-mongering to the beating of a post–9/11 dead horse.