Repercussions after a tot is lost
In the depressing and airless “Angels Crest,” Ethan (Thomas Dekker), a kind, if hapless young dad, looks away just long enough for his 3-year-old son to wander off into the snow and freeze to death.
The expected emotional misery ensues but, in spreading out the grief among the titular town’s vaguely connected denizens, Catherine Trieschmann’s script, based on the novel by Leslie Schwartz, barely scratches the potentially loaded surfaces it serves up.
Only Ethan’s boozy floozy of a much older — and why is that? — ex-wife (Lynn Collins) is handed a distinct enough personality to patch together a real character. But she’s such an unappealing, one-note creation that more decidedly proves less.
Under Gaby Dellal’s (“On a Clear Day”) wobbly direction, the rest of the name cast — including Jeremy Piven as a grubby, haunted local D.A., Mira Sorvino playing a compassionate diner gal and Elizabeth McGovern and Kate Walsh (TV’S “Private Practice”) as badly written lesbians — never convincingly disappears into the bucolic environment.
Similarly, for the boy-toyish Dekker (so effective as the flamboyant Lance Loud in HBO’S “Cinema Verite” and the bisexual college kid in Gregg Araki’s “Kaboom”), all the flannel and denim in the world just can’t turn some actors into Montana mountain folk. “Angels Crest.” MPAA rating: R for language and some sexual content. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes. At Laemmle’s Music Hall 3, Beverly Hills.