Cole (Philip Ettinger) is first seen traveling around town, visiting elderly people, bringing them supplies, treating everyone with gentleness and respect. He visits his grandmother (the great Tess Harper), giving her an envelope of cash. He's excited about his new girlfriend, Charlotte (Stacy Martin). Cole is damn near saintly! But a dark truth hovers over this kindness. Cole deals in opiates, scarfing them from the nursing home where he works as an aide, as well as picking them up from an ex-con friend Reese (Michael Trotter). When Terry (Cosmo Jarvis), an old high school friend, returns to town, hoping to "diversify" the drug trade by cooking meth, he clashes with not only Cole, but with Everett, the drug kingpin in town (Marc Menchaca). Cole begs Terry to be careful.
There are added emotional melodramas. Cole's mother (Lili Taylor) skipped town a long time ago, and returns for a family funeral. Cole is hesitant to forgive her. Charlotte gravitates towards Terry, attracted by his ambition. A pretty bartender (Kerry Bishé) is thrown into the mix.
It's almost unforgivable to put great actors like Tess Harper and Lili Taylor in your movie and give them next to nothing to do. Most of the performances are either cliched or indistinct, with Cosmo Jarvis the most notable exception. He oozes energy, charisma, aggression, seduction. Many of the actors struggle to portray themselves as having grown up in this downtrodden hard-scrabble world. Not Jarvis. He seems like he actually lives there. Every time he shows up, the film sparks to life.
One of the things "The Evening Hour" does well is show how Oxy has affected pretty much every single person in the town. They're either addicts, recovering from being addicts, or dealing drugs. Oxy has seeped so much into the town's culture that it is the town culture. But once the film focuses in on the territory clash between the various drug dealers, "The Evening Hour" loses what interest it might have had. Taylor and Harper vanish from the movie. Cole is too vague a character to hold the center.
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