Johns

Rookie writer-director Scott Silver blows a promising premise. It's Christmas Eve, and John (David Arquette) -- a young but experienced Los Angeles street hustler -- is trying to teach the ropes to innocent Donner (Lukas Haas). John has recently stolen money from a drug dealer, and Donner's naive attempts to help him out result in tragedy. The first part of this film is convincingly gritty and wry; Silver effectively captures the relentlessly ugly, smog-bound atmosphere that envelopes Los Angeles. But as John's problems mount up, the story takes a wrong turn into TV movie of the week-dom. Silver compounds the problem with heavy-handed music -- a capella religious c...