Traveller spins a compelling yarn about a highly insular clan of itinerant Irish con-men making the circuit throughout the southern United States. The story is apparently based on fact. Scottish and Irish gypsies (known as "tinkers" in the old country) who immigrated to America during the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-19th century set up shop in the rural South and freely ran cons on anyone not of their clan. Bill Paxton plays Bokky, a modern-day "Traveller" who roads his way around the South scamming people with phony home repair schemes and crummy used car swindles. Into this world wanders Pat O'Hara (Mark Wahlberg) who returns to the Travellers to bury his father, a onetime Traveller cast out of the fold for marrying an outsider. Pat is shunned by Boss Jack, the tyrannical head of the clan, but is taken under wing by the soft-hearted Bokky to learn the ropes and rules of the grift. From The Sting to Paper Moon to The Grifters, Americans movies have been in love with the intricacies of the con game. Though the scams in Traveller are much more low rent, there remains a certain vicarious thrill in watching people get taken. Con men, along with jewel thieves, are our most beloved criminals.

Jim McGlynn's script certainly has an interesting background to play around in. His Celtic-by-way-of-Kentucky subculture bears a solid ring of authenticity. Though Traveller has the undoubted air of indie about it, it's really reaching for something more mainstream. Aside from its unique subcultural slant, McGlynn's script doesn't wander far from the tried-and-true Hollywood formula. Naturally, Bokky is getting tired of ripping off innocent people. Naturally, young Pat has got the stuff to outshine his mentor. Naturally, Bokky runs across a cute girl (Julianna Margulies) and decides to pull "one last job" before calling it quits. If the story had been about, say, hitmen, then the whole deal would seem horribly cliché. McGlynn's script paints its characters in the lightest of strokes. Certainly more could have been made of Bokky's briefly mentioned dead wife and child. More drama could have been wrung out of Pat's filial feelings for Bokky--especially when Bokky starts to go down the same rocky road of love with an "outsider" that Pat's exiled father did.

Traveller is a modest film, and its successes are similarly modest. Paxton is now masterly at milking the hangdog good-guy look. Julianna Margulies (making the transition from TV's "ER") is appropriately earthy and winsome. The biggest surprise for many may be Mark Wahlberg who, with a few more performances like this, could make us forget all about that "Marky Mark" crap. Jack Green's direction captures the grit and grease of Southern life with a minimum of embellishment. Kudos all around for fashioning a simple story that manages to feel unique and comfortably familiar at the same time.