Hearts in Atlantis is based on two short stories from a collection of the same title by Stephen King. The plot is a familiar one: A stranger comes into a small New England town, and unusual events transpire. Whereas The Stranger (1946) featured a fascist after World War II, Hearts in Atlantis, directed by Scott Hicks, gives only obscure clues about the stranger in a town near Bridgeport, Connecticut, during 1960 (though the filming actually took place in several Virginia towns). Ted Brautigan (played by Anthony Hopkins) is the stranger, who rents the upstairs flat in a duplex owned by Liz Garfield (played by Hope Davis) but gives vague answers to all questions about his identity. The hero of the film is Bobby Garfield (played by Anton Yelchin), Liz’s eleven-year-old son, whose father died when he was five. Shortly after taking up residence, Brautigan offers to pay Bobby $1 per day to read to him articles in the daily newspaper and to keep on the lookout for evil men who are after him. Bobby accepts because he wants to buy a bicycle, as his mother professes to be too poor to afford such a purchase, though her purchase of expensive clothes belies her claim, and her cancellation of a birthday dinner to have sex with her boss reveals what kind of woman she and her boss are. (He later rapes her on a supposed weekend business trip.) In time, Bobby and Brautigan bond, especially after the stranger tells him a story about a famous football game and gives fatherly advice about the joy surrounding a boy’s first kiss. On one occasion Brautigan appears suddenly to stop a local bully, who threatens to fondle Bobby’s girlfriend Carol Gerber (played by Mika Boorem) and to beat up Bobby, by telling the bully that he knows about a deep secret, namely, that he puts on his mother’s clothes at home. Later, Brautigan puts Carol’s dislocated shoulder back in place after the same bully later beats up Carol. When evidence of the manhunt for Brautigan appears in town, Bobby at first does not want to alert him, fearful that he will lose a friend, but soon the dragnet closes in, Liz spitefully reports him to the anonymous posse, and Brautigan is whisked away in a limousine by mysterious characters. We are led to believe that Brautigan is one of many psychics abducted by J. Edgar Hoover to root out Communists, a farfetched tale indeed. Thereafter, Liz and Bobby move, as she is fired after the rape and finds new employment in a town outside Boston. The film begins and ends with scenes of an adult Bobby (played by David Morse), who returns to the town to attend the funeral of his best friend, who willed him a baseball mitt at the age of eleven, and he drops by the house where he once lived. The nostalgia of the film serves to remind filmviewers that one’s life can often be shaped by true friends who are long gone. MH