You Can Count on Me

Composite Score: 85.3

Starring: Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, Rory Culkin, J. Smith-Cameron, Matthew Broderick, Jon Tenney, Kenneth Lonergan, and Josh Lucas

Director: Kenneth Lonergan

Writer: Kenneth Lonergan

Genres: Drama, Comedy

MPAA Rating: R for language, some drug use, and a scene of sexuality

Box Office: $11.24 million worldwide

Why should you Watch This Film?

                You Can Count on Me is Kenneth Lonergan’s film about a single mother whose life comes a bit unraveled when her drifter younger brother returns to town to stay with her and her son for a while. The film stars Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo as adult siblings Sammy and Terry who lost their parents at a young age and now have a close, if occasionally strained, relationship. They are joined by Rory Culkin as Sammy’s son Rudy, Matthew Broderick as Sammy’s boss Brian, and Jon Tenney as her boyfriend Bob. The initial contrast between Sammy’s and Terry’s lives soon becomes more of a comparison as we see the ways that his maturity and her immaturity actually match one another more than the surface might indicate. The film received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay and for Best Lead Actress for Linney, while also serving as the launching point for Ruffalo’s mainstream career. Its simple but touching story remains one of the more interesting of the early 2000s.

Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?

                The simplicity of You Can Count on Me comes as both blessing and curse, giving audiences plenty of easy and relatable content without ever fully standing out from other dramas outside of its unique framing of the story around the relationship between an adult sister and brother. The single mom butting heads with her boss over time off and not being sure whether to fully commit to her new boyfriend, in particular, feel pretty archetypal in terms of story beats here with not a whole lot of deviation from the potential resolutions of those storylines. The plot structure and relationships throughout the film all end up being fairly familiar, so it’s hard to pick out what specifically about the film’s story stands out so much as the characterizations and performances do. Don’t get me wrong, familiar stories and tropes aren’t guaranteed detractors from a film, but in this case, it feels like a film more focused on its characters and less on innovative plots, which may or may not work for you.

So wait, why should you Watch This Film?

                Though its story might rely heavily on tropes, the acting and characters of You Can Count on Me do it a winning justice that keep it memorable. Matthew Broderick’s uncharacteristically driven bank manager Brian feels like something out of a much more humorous film, but his performance and character never feel fully out of place, either, thanks to the actor’s everyman personality and his engaging role in Sammy’s character arc. Likewise, Rory Culkin (in a performance that’s more reserved and more engaging than some of his brothers’ offerings at his age) delivers a compelling child performance as Rudy, coming across quite accurately as the child of a single-parent home (at least as portrayed in the early-2000s), seeking the approval of adults without ever coming across as annoying or brown-nosing. It’s a difficult performance to pull off in such an adult film, but he never takes you out of the story with anything he does. Ruffalo would be the best part of this film were it not for Linney’s leading performance, but he still handles his bulky load admirably, particularly for an actor coming out of mostly b-list horror films at this point in his career. His Terry is complex, feeling more human than most movie characters, thanks in large part to the role that Lonergan wrote for him: He is a drifter with a criminal record, a girlfriend who doesn’t actually seem that interested in him, no clear direction in life, and a profound lack of any sense of purpose outside of himself, but in all of that, he manages to avoid coming across as jaded or rebellious. Instead, his performance feels very grounded in the same sense of listlessness that Sammy seems to be experiencing, which makes for a less intense but even more relatable characterization, capturing the essence of one’s mid-20s to early-30s better than any sitcom has ever dreamed of doing. Like I said, though, it’s Linney’s performance that runs the show, as it should, in a film that is very much about her coming to grips with the many unknowns in her own life. It’s this endearingly flawed performance that reminds the audience that it’s okay to make mistakes and to own up to those mistakes. Her simple performance resonates so well because of its realness – keeping a brave face up despite the messiness of her situation, as film characters seem so hesitant to do – and for that, she certainly earned an Oscar nomination.

                In a film driven by its characters, You Can Count on Me is overflowing with human performances that lend themselves to a feeling of realness rarely seen in dramedies like this one, something that Lonergan excels at, and which makes this one of the Greatest Films of All Time. Its story beats might feel overly familiar at points, but the grounded reality of the characters and their senses of selves more than make up for it. This film can currently be streamed for free with ads via Pluto TV or rented on most other streaming services if you’re trying to figure out where to watch it.