I enjoyed this movie a lot. It was a compelling drama that dealt with some serious issues, mainly fathers abandoning their families. Most of us consider dads who abandon their families to be the scum of the earth. But in this movie, we get to see things from the point of view of Walter, our deadbeat dad. We see him as a tragic, tortured character, who never really wanted to leave his family, but who got to the point where he convinced himself that they were better off without him. He's a flawed character, but a sympathetic one. He's a man dealing with a lot of demons from his past, especially an emotionally abusive father. Deep down, he wants to reconnect with his family, but he doesn't know how. His family are mostly hardened and embittered, with the exception of his mother and son Andy. I like how, in this movie, there are no saints or villains. Only imperfect humans trying to deal with an imperfect situation.

The performances were good, especially from Eriq La Salle as Walter. He gives a mostly understated performance that, nevertheless, allows us to feel his deep, inner pain and longing to somehow reconnect with his family and make up for his past mistakes. Veteran actress Cicely Tyson is wonderful too, as his mom. All of the cast gave heartfelt, emotional performances that made you care about them and want to become involved in their lives.

I'm not sure I liked the plot point about Walter's brother James getting into a relationship with his wife Charlotte. It was a little cringy. I did like that the movie didn't go for the sappy ending where Walter and Charlotte reconcile and become all lovey dovey again. She was a woman deeply hurt, and some hurts just can't be made up for so easily. I did like that Walter decided to stay and be a part of his kids' lives, though. How that was eventually going to work out, though, with Charlotte and James together, I'm not sure. It would have to be really awkward.

All in all, this was a poignant, family drama that mostly eschewed sap and sentimentality and gave you realistic, two-dimensional characters that you became invested in. An engaging movie that I won't soon forget.

What is Charles Burnett, the director of brilliant, oppressive tales of Black life like KILLER OF SHEEP and MY BROTHER'S WEDDING doing directing a made-for-TV movie on the Hallmark Channel? The flip and glib answer is that he is a director and can use the work, but watching this movie with its constant level of pain for the first fifty minutes, the answer is: telling the same sort of story he always has. If the settings are cleaner than his earlier work, if the actors are handsomer and more professional, there is still the same sense of anguish and alienation that always suffuses his work.

Eriq LaSalle plays Walter, a man who was set to be a professional football player until a knee injury sidelined him. He left his wife, children and hometown and wandered for the better part of a decade until the death of his father brings him back to town for the reading of the will. Anger and resentment suffuse every scene and rightfully and really so. As Walter struggles almost incoherently to try to make some amends for his failures, Burnett and his crew evoke some real sympathy for his plight.

However, this being a Hallmark TV-movie, there are some givens: there will be reconciliation, there will be some improvement, and this serves to render the film not banal, but more standard. As a result, this is a very good piece of work, but not a great one.

Yet, given the small amount of Mr. Burnett's work over the last forty years, we can be grateful for this. It is a real story, well told and that, alas, is all too rare.