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The central character in this movie is Jake, played by Robert Dinero, who is involved in a long standing struggle to find a stand up position spiritually, even while experiencing circumstances that continue to sap his vitality. The opening scene starts off with a flashback to earlier days at the beginnings of his marriage where he is zoning out in front of the TV and is confronted by his youthful wife who intends to leave him then as she says he is hurting her soul. The way he handles this confrontation is his big sin and follows him all the way into the present scenes of the movie where he is handling a bevy of cases for incarnated potential parolees. The main case he is working now for the purposes of the movie, is with Stone, who has been in prison 8 years with the potential for parole right now depending on his decision. Stone is a seemingly A-moral character who is at the same time reading into the of the depths of Jake's despair that is relatively unspoken and hidden by him but yet he seems to wear it on his sleeve without saying it. The character of Stone has a still attentive pretty young wife who visits him and is hoping for quick way back home. This part of the movie does stretch the belief of the viewer in that it is unlikely she would hang around for 8 years after just one year of marriage waiting for him to be released and just having occasional visits. Jake is attending church services with his wife and constantly listening to Christian talk radio as he drives around. As the movie progresses we find that he apparently has had a long standing depressive reaction to his work with miscreants that included job burnout and he has done this apparently to support the house and the expenses. There need not be a split between the spiritual and material and between work and the spiritual but in Jake's case there is and while he is trying to counter how the jobs saps his spirit, he is and has spent too much time at something he essentially loathes and he is in an ongoing uphill battle to right his own ship and has seemingly failed to bring things totally upright for himself. When the seductions appear in the film, because of his weakened state from the job and his inner turmoil he is somewhat easy prey for the forces of seduction. He never found base camp one for his own personal peace and redemption. The question of the movie is whether he will fall all the way or whether his spiritual striving s outside of work will keep him from a total fall into personal chaos and the points of no return. But more so this movie forms as a portrait, of someone who to the observer should have left his job at all costs much earlier on, if he ever was going to find equilibrium for his soul and spirit, he has to escape the prison of this job, which was an ongoing dark cloud for him. While he was always seeking council, it was too distant from the reality that someone needed to get through to him hands on that the job he was doing, while maybe doable by others, was in fact ruinous to him and too encompassing to wholly overcome with his attempts to right himself outside the confines of the job.
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