Box of Moonlight MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +2 Content: -3

As a no-nonsense construction crew supervisor, Al Fountain (John Turturro) knows all too well that his management style creates hostility among his co-workers. When the current project is abruptly halted, lonely Al decides to tour the remote countryside far from their Chicago headquarters before returning home. Al's suppressed dreams of being a carefree kid again begin to take hold. He wanders the back roads and eventually stops to help "Kid" (Sam Rockwell), a young man in a Daniel Boone outfit with a broken down junk car. Kid is a devious parasite who lives by his wits, working very hard not to work. He lives in the woods in half a trailer, bootlegs electrical and telephone lines and eats crumbled Oreos for breakfast. Al discovers all of this as Kid cleverly and subtly makes sure his new friend can't leave. Gradually Al loosens up and begins to enjoy Kid's bizarre lifestyle. Meanwhile, Al's wife and young son back home are becoming impatient with his delayed return. There are some funny moments as Al and Kid blend their differences into friendship.

In typical Hollywood fashion, Al, the morally upright family man, returns home a more likable and understanding person, having adopted a sympathy for Kid's immoral lifestyle. As Al's disapproval of Kid fades, he and Kid pick up two girls. A bedroom scene implies that they have sex. Al's girl is a recently fired phone sex operator. The stoic family man gleefully joins Kid in vandalizing the abandoned construction site where he had worked by shooting out windows and destroying equipment. BOX OF MOONLIGHT has a trunk full of filthy language, including 45 obscenities and 27 regular profanities, most of it from Kid. Particularly offensive and gratuitous is the portrayal of an elderly Evangelical Christian couple wanting to "save" Al who later appear on TV as murderers of a family who rejected religion. A ludicrous scene makes fun of the locals and Christianity when an image of Christ appears on a tattered old billboard. Crude sexual conversations, two scenes with full frontal male nudity, disgusting language and a slap at Christianity will turn off those seeking wholesome entertainment.

Preview Reviewer: Mary Draughon
Distributor: Trimark Pictures, 2644 30th St., Santa Monica, CA 90405