Short Eyes

As a convicted sex offender seeking the impossible—a normal life, whatever that is—Kevin Bacon walks through the indie drama The Woodsman like a man wary of punches. He talks in a brusque voice meant to ward off conversation; he spends his lunch hour at a lumberyard cafeteria looking at his tray. Bacon's the kind of unfussy ensemble player who's both described and dismissed as "solid," but his reserve perfectly suits the role. Like the character, he ducks his head, does his work and tries like hell not to get noticed.

The movie, directed by first-timer Nicole Kassell from a script she adapted with Steven Fechter from his play, is a grimly earnest pedophiles-are-people-too character study pitched between the squirm inducement of Happiness and the sweaty claustrophobia of the Dardenne brothers' The Son. It follows Bacon's guarded ex-con as he tries to keep his new job, his new girlfriend (a credibly hard-bitten Kyra Sedgwick) and his shoebox apartment—which is located across from a playground. He also tries to keep his past under wraps, knowing what will happen when his co-workers find out.

The acting is top-notch, from Benjamin Bratt as Bacon's wary, sinister brother-in-law to rapper Mos Def, who's coolly fearsome in his small role as Bacon's skeptical parole officer—a character who both embodies and expresses our distaste. To make the protagonist sympathetic, though, the movie dishonestly fudges the ugliness of his crime, leaving the details unspecified and giving him an unusual degree of self-control (and apparently a healthy sex life). Worse, Kassell and Fechter devise another, meaner predator, which draws an unwitting distinction between good child molesters and bad child molesters.

To his credit, Bacon takes the character farther than The Woodsman wants to go. The climactic scene, in which he ambiguously sweet-talks a lonely girl (Hannah Pilkes), may pull back from its likely real-world outcome. But the actor's empathetic portrayal of helpless compulsion will still make your skin crawl.

—Jim Ridley

Note:The Woodsman starts Friday at the Belcourt; Kimberly Brown, director of the Vanderbilt Forensic Evaluation Team, will introduce the film 7 p.m. Saturday.