HATERS - find a better TWIST ending...I dare YOU (SPOILER maybe)

I completely saw it coming. There was no reason for Lucas to marry the banker's daughter (other than to please his parents and he had already told his father that he was going to follow his own path in life during the "I-could-never-run- the-feed-lot" speech) and Lucas' mother was already trying to find a way to get the father to accept the grandson.

My biggest problem with the ending was the director's choice to focus the wedding (and thereby the film's ending) on the father's personal struggle (cut to father walking in a field, cut to the mother grabbing his arm, cut to the father petting a horse, cut to the father looking at the son, cut to the father releasing the horse...) I get it; the horse is a metaphor. It should have been edited to focus on the wedding of the main characters, not the transformation of the antagonist. As disliked, abusive, and downright nasty as the father was, he was no Inspector Javert (Les Miserables) and his character's arc was not a primary theme in the film (until the screwed up last 10 minutes.)

I personally thought the character of Lucas and his story arc was much more interesting and should have been the focus of the ending. He matured, grew a backbone, and overcame a near-death accident; but the director chose the father's transformation as the film's resolution. Chad Allen was channeling James Dean in this freakin' film. He was amazing in some of the earlier scenes. I need to find some other examples of his work.

I too, like some other's, didn't like the final shot of Charmaine climbing the windmill. It seemed too 'sweet'; though I did get a little ominous feeling: Charmaine on the windmill completely harkened back to Emily on the ladder in 'Our Town', who dies while in labor.

Lastly, I spent the entire movie terrified that Charmaine and Lucas would end up being siblings. While that is just plain creepy, the tenor of the early scenes explaining Charmaine's fatherlessness and the distance between Lucas and his father totally led me down that dark path. However, once the baby was born, I knew that couldn't be the twist of the movie; though I was almost positive for a few minutes.