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Director Hal Hartley's third feature film follows two brothers on as they travel across Long Island, New York. Bill McCabe (Robert Burke), a tough-talking ladies' man, has just pulled a robbery and has been double-crossed by his lover. Shortly thereafter, his younger brother, Dennis (Bill Sage), a bookish scholar, convinces him to help search for their father, a radical (and former baseball hero) who's escaped government custody. Along the way, the two encounter both "trouble and desire," when they meet numerous eccentric characters including Elina, an epileptic Romanian girl, and Kate, a woman with a psychotic ex-husband. More of a road movie than Hartley's previous films, SIMPLE MEN takes the director's uniquely stilted style and puts it (literally) in motion, as the McCabe brothers set out to find their fugitive father. Burke and Sage are excellent in their leading roles, enhancing Hartley's trademark clipped dialogue with exceptional performances.
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