ynopsis: a merry gang of lonely outcasts (some intentionally so, and others not) takes to the railroad tracks of rural New Jersey, finding friendship and heartache, and learning life lessons about letting people be who they are. But McCarthy's film reaches deep into the tearjerk bag, pulling out not one, but an entire cast of broken-winged birds—and even from its outset The Station Agent treads on the territory of being just a touch too precious for its own good.

Our outcast-protagonist-railroad-nerd Finn McBride, played with resounding excellence by Peter Dinklage, finds himself the sudden owner of an abandoned train depot—think more glorified shed than Grand Central Station—in far-flung, transparently named, Newfoundland, New Jersey. Warned that there's "no one out there", Finn discovers all too quickly that he has less privacy than ever. If it's not the locals gawking at the shocking new sight of a dwarf—Dinklage is 4'6"— it's the crazy lady in the SUV trying to run him off the road, or the hot dog guy with no friends trying shamelessly to derail Finn's quest for what he thinks is his hermetic destiny.

The three turn out to be a sort of wacky, mismatched bunch of pals—Bobby Cannavale's aggressive hot dog vendor, Joe, turns out to be as needy as Finn is withdrawn, and the crazy SUV lady, Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), is somewhere in between the two, stuck in a see-saw state of emotions after the death of her child. The growth of their friendships, separately and together, is replete with lessons of understanding, the pains of closeness as well as distance, and the ultimate dangers of putting oneself on the line. And yet despite how deftly the actors handle their roles—Clarkson is characteristically exceptional, and Dinklage plays his shyly recalcitrant lead with astonishing depth of character and expression—either the film's structure or its approach seems somehow critically flawed.

Aiming awkwardly at the "lighthearted drama" target, The Station Agent hits outside the mark far too often to justify heavy-handed humor like Olivia's klutziness, and at times the treatment of Finn's persecution seems drawn with too-bold strokes. The film's score is oppressively jangly, and its repeated attempts to inject some carefree mirth into the otherwise completely depressing lives of the characters is intrusive and queer. "Oh look! Some more goofy folk music is showing us that despite the deep emptiness and hurt these men feel, they're really bonding by going to look at some freight trains!" Again the strokes are too broad, and the finer points of composing a film that subtly appreciates both the frailty and humor—even if it's tragic—of daily life have yet to be worked out in McCarthy's vision.

But for all the times The Station Agent seems to overshoot itself, there are gem-like moments of quiet, resonant emotion, almost all of them delivered by Dinklage's brooding eyes. It is little surprise that Finn's slow integration into the sorry lot of misfits that is his new hometown—including a bleary-eyed Michelle Williams and a young black girl with no friends—heralds his ascension into opening himself up to people, and his transition is as believable as it is difficult. Yet the film's aims are difficult as well: here are the problems with being alone, here are the problems with caring about people, here are the problems with being unusual looking... but are our volatile heroes really getting anywhere with each other, or themselves? Or are we just being shown the end of the line, as it were?

An engaging and eminently watchable film, The Station Agent excels at what sentiment it doesn't force on us, and has an overall sense of grace and subtlety to its main characters that is too often lacking in obvious tearjerker movies. Yet McCarthy's tendency to be a little too pat, a little too cute and sweet (at the same time as being vaguely nihilistic in his worldview) is simplistic and a wee bit too sentimental, in the overly sappy sense of that term.. That said, Dinklage and Clarkson are easy and enriching to watch, and there are far too few movies about railfans these days. Worth a look-see.