The quiet humanity of the performances infuses the movie with a truthfulness that outweighs its flaws.

An overall lack of drive drops the pacing from languorous to a slow, stalled crawl, but the journey itself isn't the point here. For once, it's the destination -- forgiveness -- that really counts.

Harjo is clearly giving his all in trying to convey a soulful mysticism in this existential journey. But the tone becomes a little ham-handed with all the lengthy interludes of barren fields, roadside fences and tracking shots of the ever-moving Volvo.

Harjo poeticizes the open road with increasing redundancy, yet his identical scenic panoramas remain preferable to his dramaturgy, which mistakes silence for pensiveness.