Ballast - 1 frown

Director/writer Lance Hammer has been getting a lot of critical acclaim for “Ballast,” a story about a broken black family in Mississippi. Obviously I’m missing something because this movie was torture to sit through and at 96 minutes, it shouldn’t be. To say that the pace is leisurely is giving the director way too much credit; it’s down right lethargic. And Hammer may know what’s happening during the first 30 minutes, but I didn’t. To top it off, the conversation young James has with his gang-banger friends is incomprehensible. Subtitles would have helped, but then, maybe those conversations weren’t really relevant anyway. Hammer’s story does have a meaningful message: that family members, practically strangers to each other, will eventually help each other to learn to live and love again. However, getting there should be the struggle the characters in the movie go through, not the audience. 10/15/08