spike-88 I was fortunate enough to meet Susette Kelo before seeing the movie. It is amazing how closely Catherine Keener gets her right; her look, voice, shyness and inner strength. The movie also does an excellent job of balancing the political story with the personal one. It's a very fine line because with too much of one you'd have a documentary and too much of the other you wouldn't know what was going on. Well worth the price of admission.

susan-11446 I really enjoyed this movie and realize why putting a human face on a seemingly dry legal issue is so important. Am impressed that it came from a first-time director and will definitely see it again.

lasprite This film gets to you. As a retired constitutional lawyer, I'm usually hard on Hollywood's typical cutting-corners presentations of legal procedures and issues. And as a life-long performer of various kinds, I usually view acting with a critical eye. This film did a great job of both: the actors playing Susan Kelo and her boyfriend were so believable & created so much empathy for the characters, that it was actually a wrench to see photos of the story's real-life principals at the end, to be reminded by those that it *was* acting. The writer and director did an excellent job of making the substance of complex & very serious legal issues accessible, and the procedural steps clear and comprehensible. Even the scene of a Supreme Court argument, usually something very, very difficult to distill simply, was tight, succinct and clear. Throughout, the human elements of the story predominated: what eminent domain did to the people of one neighborhood -- and the human elements were very engrossing. The villains may seem to outside eyes just a slight touch caricatured, but I am sure that, through the eyes of Susan Kelo and her neighbors, the bureaucrats, politicians & functionaries who knowingly stole their homes, deserved every bit of those portrayals. An excellent job overall!

Reid Gagle The movie deals with a significant social issue, the growing trend of municipalities abusing "eminent domain" to evict lower middle class people from the homes they own to hand the land over to big corporations, in the name of urban renewal. The movie suffers a bit from "TV movie of the week" syndrome, but it is well done and the issue is timely.The fact-based movie is grounded in one woman's story to save her home and her community. Toward the end, the movie goes a little too far afield in following irrelevant parts of her story rather than the main story line, but that's a small quibble.