an unbelievably bad film

It's dissapointing how bad this movie is b/c it had such potential to be a rich character driven story.
instead, it falls flat on its face almost from the very beginning and insults the viewer throughout the entire film.
most of the problems w/ the horrible script have been addressed already (my favorite is that elijah wood's character brutally murders three men and then is 'shocked' and 'surprised' when told that his father and brother killed people - yeah, ok). burns' character and his involvement w/ dawson's character is never fleshed out and is instead left to be an unbelievable storyline simply meant to garner sympathy in the end. the climax scene at the end in the bar is ridiculously stupid and insults the viewer's intelligence - but by that point i didn't expect anything short of retarded anyway.
the point alot of people are overlooking is that the main performances are a huge letdown. the worst, by far, is elijah wood.
you're going to tell me that a kid who spent the first 18 years of his life growing up in hell's kitchen surrounded by tough irish men and then shoots three men in cold blood grows up to be the wimp that elijah wood presents on screen? AND WHAT ABOUT HIS LACK OF AN ACCENT!!!! virtually every other character either has an irish roll or at least an affected new york accent. i mean COME ON! he sounds like he just walked off the set of lord of the rings! he throws in a few words here and there but overall he spends the entire movie speaking w/ a standard english dialect. the scenes between he and burns are unbelievably boring. besides the pointless dialogue - which throws in a 'fu<k' every other sentence to give it flavor - both actors are extremely wooden. at one point wood's character gets mad at his brother and is supposed to hit him to say 'f-u, back off!' - but the emotion that wood shows is virtually non-exsistent.
as far as his character in the script - the kid is supposed to be the smart one in the family and he comes back to town after 3 years, goes out for a drink, buys a pack of cigarettes and blahblahblah when the consequences are as big as they are? pleeeeaaaasssseeee....
rosario dawson is another letdown. she is playing a poor puerto rican living in hell's kitchen and not only does her accent go in and out, but when she's told that her husband is alive after thinking that he has been dead for 3 years she shows virtually no emotion whatsoever.
the camera direction is good as well as the soundtrack, which manages to hold your attention from scene to scene and sticks w/ you afterwards.
the script is bad, the acting is bad. overall, a very bad movie. no surprise it never made it theatres.
Ed Burns has been better and hopefully will be better again, but there is no denying how bad this movie is and how dissapointed i was afterwards.