Eldard’s gut-wrenching performance is not the only effective acting job. Jimmy returns in defeat to his Forrest Hills, Queens, home, were he tries to keep up the pretense with his mother, played by Lois Smith. The actress brings reality to whatever she does, and here she is a plodding widow who loves her son, but is disappointed in the distance he has kept from home, and conveys a motherly desire to see him settle down and be closer. There is love and anger in her performance, and she is also a woman on the decline, therefore earning our sympathy and pity.

Jimmy encounters two others from his past, Nikki, played intensively by Jill Hennessy of “Law and Order” renown, with whom Jimmy was once close, and her husband, Randy, portrayed by the excellent actor Bobby Cannavale. Randy recognizes the old spark between his wife and Jimmy, and is also full of resentment toward Jimmy, whom he pegs as a loser trying to look like a winner and regarding him and the old home environment condescendingly. There is a nasty scene in which Randy lashes out angrily in revenge. We also see Nikki’s ambitions as a local singer and her buttering up to Jimmy in an intimate scene in hope that he can do something to help her get a real career.