In the hands of any other director, The Gingerbread Man's familiar terrain would be routine and unproblematic. But Altman sees the story as a framework for dark broodings on how the real world--faceless, tempestuous, and immune to manipulation--shatters our illusions of personal control. He makes a virtue of Changwei Gu's murky, muddy photography and reveals the ruddy clubbishness of McGruder's law offices to be as artificial as a theme park. And Kenneth Branagh is a revelation as a good ol' boy whose amiable chatter conceals a fundamental lack of interest in other human beings. His terror as his life spins off-kilter will stay with the viewer long after the details of Grisham's plot have been forgotten.