Synopsis
On a trip to the beach, a teenage girl named Tobe meets a charismatic stranger named Harlan, who dresses like a cowboy and claims to be a former ranch hand. The pair feel an instant attraction and begin a relationship, but her father, a lawman, is suspicious of her lover.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Edward NortonHarlan
- Evan Rachel WoodTobe
- David MorseWade
- Rory CulkinLonnie
- Bruce DernCharlie
- John DiehlSteve
- Geoffrey LewisSheridan
- Elizabeth PeñaGale
- Kat DenningsApril
- Hunter ParrishKris
Recommendations
- 91
The A.V. Club
It's mysterious and bold at every turn, and refreshingly removed from the commonplace. - 88
Rolling Stone
Down in the Valley is a wild thing that sticks with you long after it's over. You know, a real movie. - 88
Premiere
The movie belongs to Wood, who creates a unique portrait of a girl hesitating at the threshold of womanhood; she's smarter, more attuned, and more spiritually ambitious than those around her, but also too decent and loyal to break from the world she knows-and too unformed to have a grasp of what she wants outside of that world. It's fantastic work. - 88
TV Guide Magazine
Driven by Edward Norton's and Evan Rachel Wood's riveting performances, writer-director David Jacobson's tense drama samples bits of cinematic Americana from sources as diverse as "Shane," "Badlands" and "Taxi Driver." - 70
Variety
Result is imperfect and overlong, but hugely ambitious and often breathtaking. - 70
The New York Times
Begins semirealistically, then veers off course, hurtling into the wild blue yonder of myth and allegory. On the way to a climactic shootout that begins on the set of a Hollywood western and ends on a foggy hillside, it makes several screeching, hairpin turns. - 50
The Hollywood Reporter
Edward Norton serves as lead actor and producer, but even his star power won't help this misfire reach a wide domestic audience. - 50
Village Voice
Like "Don't Come Knocking," this contrived lament for the lonesome cowboy means to measure what remains of the old western in the absence of the Old West, eventually plopping its displaced ranch hand protagonist onto the fake Main Street of an old western movie set just to make sure we don't miss any of the cine-mythic connotations.
