Kenneth Lonergan's directorial debut, You Can Count on Me, is a bittersweet drama about the affectionate, but strained relationship between two siblings whose parents died in a car accident when they were children. No information is given on how they grew up, but 18 years later, the older sister, Sammy (Laura Linney), is a single mother who still lives in her parents’ house in the small, upstate New York town of Scottsville, and the younger brother, Terry (Mark Ruffalo), is an aimless drifter, constantly in need of money and always in trouble.

That brief description suggests what the film easily could have been: a simplistic good-bad scenario in which Terry is depicted as the troubled younger brother in need of salvation from his responsible older sister. And, in some ways, that is what the story is about. But, Lonergan, who at the time was best known as a playwright and screenwriter, was wise enough to realize that even would-be saviors more often than not have troubles of their own, and Sammy is no exception. Her heart is in the right place and she wants to do the right thing, but because she is human, she makes mistakes. She misjudges people, she makes snap judgments, she loses her temper, and she has the bad habit of sleeping with men not because she loves them, but because she feels sorry for them.

When the film begins, Terry decides to return home unexpectedly to visit Sammy and her eight-year-old son, Rudy (Rory Culkin). This is the first time brother and sister have seen each other in two years, and Sammy is greatly excited, deluding herself that Terry is coming home to see her not because he is in trouble or because he needs money, but because he wants to see her and reconnect. As it turns out, Terry is in some kind of trouble, but Lonergan keeps the exact nature of his problems vague because they are not the heart of the narrative. Rather, it is the way in which he and Sammy deal with each other and their respective, sometimes interrelated, problems.

When Terry comes to visit, Sammy is caught between two men. The first is Bob (Jon Tenney), an amiable guy she has dated off-and-on for several years. Bob surprises her with a proposal for marriage, something Sammy is neither prepared for nor particularly interested in. At the same time, she has begun an ill-advised affair with her new, high-strung bank manager, Brian (Matthew Broderick), whose wife is pregnant. Her compromised position makes it difficult for her to preach responsibility to Terry, as her bad choices create their own daunting issues.

However, some of the film’s best scenes are not between Sammy and Terry, but rather between Terry and Rudy, Sammy’s young son. Rudy, who has never known his father—a man with whom Sammy wants nothing to do—immediately looks up to his uncle. He doesn’t see a scruffy, ill-kept, chain-smoking failure. Rather, he sees an older male who shares secrets with him, talks straight to him, teaches him how to hammer a nail, and offers to take him fishing. Sammy obviously wants Terry and Rudy to get along, but it is like walking on glass because she is always afraid that Terry will act irresponsibly and Rudy will be hurt as a result.

It is this tentative fear of everything breaking down that pervades so much of You Can Count on Me. It is ultimately about people who love each other, but are often unable to deal with each other. The effort is there, but Lonergan makes the point clear that effort doesn’t always end with neat results (the road to hell being paved with good intentions and all that). His screenplay is well-written—he has a knack for writing good, honest dialogue and creating believable tension between the characters. He takes dramatic scenes to a certain pitch without letting them go overboard into hysteria. It is his studied restraint in both writing and directing that makes the film work.

Lonergan is aided greatly by solid performances from his leads, most of whom were stepping up to leading status after many years of supporting roles. Laura Linney, who at the time was best known for playing the phony wife in The Truman Show (1998), is excellent at conveying both Sammy’s strengths the vulnerability (she earned the first of her her so-far three Oscar nominations), while Mark Ruffalo is outstanding in portraying a troubled young man without making him insufferably flawed. Terry has problems, but underneath his irresponsibility and mercurial temper you get the sense that he is truly a decent person. Although this was Ruffalo’s first leading role, he had worked with Lonergan before in the theatre, as they were both members of Naked Angels theatre company and Ruffalo had played a major role in Lonergans 1996 off-Broadway play This is Our Youth. Matthew Broderick, who was the most well-known of the lead actors, serves mostly as comic relief in his role as Brian the bank manager, although he does make the character interesting enough in his own right. Not to be overlooked is Rory Culkin, who in his feature debut turned in an effective performance as Rudy—engaging without being cute.

With all its complex familial issues, it should come as little surprise that You Can Count on Me leaves the ending relatively open, suggesting that the kinds of problems the characters face are not easily solved, especially over such a short period of time. Despite it being his film directorial debut, Lonergan proved to already have a solid grasp of how to convey multifaceted human relations with simple, yet effective cinematic style. The film is never flashy or aesthetically gimmicky, instead relying on a tried-and-true approach that highlights the emotional core and the strength of the dialogue and the performances. It certainly portended good things from its young writer/director, and it is a shame that he has only written and directed two features in the 25 years since.

Copyright © 2025 James Kendrick

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