An Oscar winner in 2002, Halle Berry was so clearly pitching for another nomination in this overwrought domestic melodrama that it becomes hard to overlook the irritating inconsistencies in the film's plotting. She plays a well-to-do mother whose doting husband (David Duchovny) loses his life in a random act of violence. To get closure she strikes up a friendship with his heroin-addicted best mate (a suspiciously dapper Benicio Del Toro) and invites him into the family home. This kind of gritty soap opera has worked well for Danish director Susanne Bier on her home turf (Brothers, After the Wedding), but in her American debut all the human elements take second place to awards-season showboating. Berry gives it her all and Del Toro is a suitably pitiable presence. But there's something so false here - why would such a devoted mother bring a thieving junkie she hardly knows into her children's home in the first place? - that it never comes anywhere near the heights of honesty and realism that its cast and director seem to believe it should.

A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.