Heavy is one of those rare and intimate films that focuses on the everyday routines of some ordinary people.

The characters work at a rural pizza joint in upstate New York. Victor (Pruitt Taylor Vince) is the shy but tenderhearted chef at the place run by his mother, Dolly (Shelley Winters). When she hires Callie (Liv Tyler), an alluring teenager, Delores (Deborah Harry), a waitress who has been working there for 15 years is jealous.

Beautifully written and directed by James Mangold, Heavy is a character study that refuses to resort to violence or contrived action sequences to sustain our interest. Instead we watch Victor's slow passage into a slightly more expansive and emotionally richer lifestyle. Dolly's death is a catalyst but it is really Callie's friendship that opens up new doors for Victor. In one sequence, he dreams that she drowns and he rescues her with a kiss. In reality, Callie's brief presence has a redemptive effect upon Victor.

Heavy is a wonderfully touching and understated film that explores the same kind of territory pioneered in short fiction by Raymond Carver.