We've all made choices. Sometimes, they come back to haunt us. Sometimes, they don't.

Graham (Dominik Tiefenthaler), Russ (Michael Wolfe) and Evan (Paul Lange) made such a choice fifteen years ago. It tore apart their friendship, yet it also kept their lives irrevocably intertwined. Since then, their lives have taken wildly divergent paths. Until now.

Russ is a career criminal whose ability to stay out of prison may have finally come to a screeching halt. That is, until he blackmails the only man who can keep him out of jail, the Manhattan District Attorney - You guessed it, Graham, whose chief of staff, Evan, is tasked with negotiating a settlement.

Talk about tangled webs.

After an agreement is reached, the three men agree to meet at Graham's Hampton beach house to finally talk about a memory that refuses to die for any of them.

Written and directed by Wolfe, Maybe Tomorrow is that rare indie adult drama that works incredibly well thanks to its trio of fine leading performances and a story that is kept simple yet compelling. The film is already proving to be wildly popular in the film fest circuit with multiple award wins at the 2012 Golden Door International Film Festival and screenings at Orlando International Film Festival, Bahamas International Film Festival, Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, Hoboken International Film Festival, Big Apple Film Festival and others.

Maybe Tomorrow is Wolfe's feature film debut, and he's kicked off his cinematic career with an intelligent and involving character driven drama that centers around the lives of three men who from the outside seem incredibly different yet are, in their foundations, dealing with the similar issue of having reached the end of their ability to live behind the masks they've worn their entire lives.

While many times such a confined set as a beach house could either be a film's death knell or obvious signs of a limited budget, in the case of Maybe Tomorrow it works perfectly for the vastness of an ocean to serve as the backdrop for the vast chasm that must be bridged if restoration of any sort is to occur in the lives of these men.

There's a slow-building ache within the very core of Maybe Tomorrow, a sense that for all the masks beings worn and all the hyped up bravado that initially explodes onto the screen we're seeing three men whose very existence seems to have come to a screeching halt on the night that changed their lives. While the circumstances are similar, Wolfe, Lange and Tiefenthaler do a terrific job of differentiating their characters and finding just the right amount of vulnerability to make us care about their stories.

It also helps that Wolfe has assembled quite the fine production team including stellar camera work from Gus Sacks and Joshua Cipolla's excellent original score. The film also features an exemplary soundtrack from the likes of Cipolla, Damien Rice and Tom McRae.

There's not a false note played anywhere during the film, though there were a couple of occasions where the film's heightened drama threatened to cross the line into melodrama. Fortunately, Wolfe had the good sense to pull things back before they got out of hand and Maybe Tomorrow ends up being a thought-provoking and introspective film.

© Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic