Journeyman actor McCarthy has only delved into feature directing once before, with 2003's quietly affecting The Station Agent, and delivers something of a similar emotional tone here with a tale of a shy widowed college professor who is drawn out of his shell when he finds an illegal immigrant couple occupying his New York flat, and invites them to stay on. In the traditions of the internationalist scenario where cultures meet and enrich the lives of all concerned, he finds a sense of purpose and attachment along the way. It would be easy to trip into cheesiness with this set-up, but a combination of Richard Jenkins's sensitive (and Oscar-nominated) reading of the professor warily opening up and McCarthy's lightness of touch with essentially staple material makes for a satisfyingly true-to-life whole, and also an undidactic one, despite its obvious indignation at the status quo. Neither the protagonist nor the illegal immigrants are idealised portraits of nobility or suffering, but believably rounded, vulnerable beings under the impersonally oppressive yoke of US post-9/11 bureaucracy.
7/10
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