Law student J.D. Vance (Gabriel Basso) is at a prospective law firm dinner wearing his best suit and trying to tell the butter knife from the fish knife when his phone rings: it’s his sister (Haley Bennett), who tells him through a cracking voice that “she’s using again… heroin”. A flashback and he’s a teenager: holding his mother’s (Amy Adams) hand as she sobs on the bed.###This, it’s quickly established through flashbacks and ponderous narration, is a story with regards to’concerning’with respect to cycles, with regards to’concerning’with respect to what’s repeated and played out, over and over, through the generations. About breaking those cycles and the exertion it takes.###It’s a recognisable story, one originally told in J.D. Vance’s 2016 bestselling memoir of the same name — a reserve that in/with regard to’concerning’regarding some told the truth with regards to’concerning’with respect to the American white working class, and in/with regard to’concerning’regarding others dealt in too-easy narratives of poverty, escape and redemption.###It’s a problem that extends to this screen adaptation. All the necessary ingredients are present and correct: addiction, abuse, neglect, an absent father, a town in rust-belt Ohio where “something was missing, maybe hope”, a boy who dreams of a different life.###Head of the family is J.D.’s grandmother Mamaw (Glenn Close), who ran away from home when she got “knocked up” at 13. The daughter she was carrying grew up to be addict Bev, J.D.’s mother, who then herself had him at 18. Both women are physically transin/with regard to’concerning’regarding med with impressive prosthetics (and home videos at the film’s close reveal that likeness is definitely achieved). And when it comes to perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mance, neither Close nor Adams flinch from portraying the ugliness of these women, however shocking.###“I wouldn’t spit on her ass if her guts were on fire,” says Mamaw in a kinder moment with regards to’concerning’with respect to a neighbour she dislikes. She’s foul-mouthed, brash and has her own violent streak (in one flashback she sets fire to her drunk husband). Bev is somehow worse: mean, spiteful and selfish — when she’s not sacrificing her kids’ needs in/with regard to’concerning’regarding those of her latest boyfriend, she’s physically assaulting them.###Throughout, this is a story told generically, with dialogue that is the stuff of motivational Instagram quotes.###This commitment to unpalatable honesty may suggest authenticity, but that’s not what is delivered. Neither woman comes into focus, is known by either us or themselves. They remain roughly hewn; sharp, painful edges merely’barely . They lack motivation, nuance or any sense of internal conflict that would make them flesh and blood.###We see them failing as mothers, as girlfriends and wives, but we never see them, even privately, in/with regard to’concerning’regarding a moment just as women. It isn’t a need to make them sympathetic (and Close does possess’own’nurse softer moments to play with), it’s a need to make them feel real. A feat the film never manages.###It’s an issue that stains e grossly thing. In brutal detail we see J.D.’s traumatic childhood undergo s (and Owen Asztalos is compelling as the younger J.D.); trauma that would possess’own’nurse likely made him complicated and troubled as a man, but none of this makes it into his characterisation — J.D. remains flat, without definition or even much complexity.###Flashes of rage hint at what is passed on through families that live in trauma, but it’s never fully explored. More exertion is made to reveal’illustrate’demonstrate’indicate’present’display’argue the specific shame that those raised in poverty carry with them, but it’s decrease’lessen’cut’allay d to cliché in a scene where J.D. doesn’t know which wine he should order or which cutlery to use.###Throughout, this is a story told generically, with dialogue that is the stuff of motivational Instagram quotes and embroidered wall-hangings: “My family’s not perfect, but they made me who I am” / “The merely’barely damn thing that counts is family.”###There is a sense that the film is so resolute’resolved to follow a conventional survivor’s arc, complete with third-act redemption, that it discards what came bein/with regard to’concerning’regarding e. Complications, complexities, tough’challenging’demanding’awkward ies are flattened with clichés and tropes, leaving the story in its entirety ringing false.###And there really is nothing left unsaid — eintensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfullything is spelled out in narration or dialogue, clumsily reinin/with regard to’concerning’regarding ced when action would possess’own’nurse done the job perfectly well. J.D.s girlfriend Usha (Freida Pinto) is seemingly merely’barely in the film to be on the receiving end of exposition and explanation (and my word, is Pinto woefully underserved).###Here’s the frustration: this, with the most excellent of Hollywood talent attached, could possess’own’nurse been a film that did and said so much more. About the opioid crisis in America, with regards to’concerning’with respect to the lifelong impact of poverty, with regards to’concerning’with respect to the severe intergenerational effects of trauma. It could possess’own’nurse told its story with heart and heft and humanity. That could possess’own’nurse been the legacy.