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One of my all time favorites.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

There is an intriguing ambiguity to the stranger who rolls into Austin, Texas, claiming to be the daughter of a deceased country singer and inheriting some of her father's talent. The pent-up anger, pain and defiance bubbles below the surface but never froths into action which is its strength, and the viewer will begin to have a little empathy with the young woman as she tries to establish a connection to her new, foreign family keeping her at arms length. On the plus side we are only once given proper verbal conflict between the two leads - no manipulative or simplistic resolutions. However, the engrossing and edgy drama somehow fails to produce a vice like grip on the viewer by the end for instead we get a graphic act where the viewer is more of an observer at the scene of a despicable crime rather than of one in crystallized understanding of the precise motive. Still, it is a smart, tense movie with two good performances which make it work...just.

Definitely well done drama on sisterhood, family jealousy, subdued violence. Worth watching and plenty of cinematographic values. Have one question which is not really a spoiler because it has to do with the first few seconds: What is with appears to be a possibly lifeless woman's naked body lying face down on a bed which the protagonist is packing? Certainly appreciate any answer that anybody can provide.

Possibly the worst movie that I have ever seen. The main character doesn't sing well and has such an accent that it's uncomfortable to listen to her speak. The movie overall was just bad, and it left you with a horrible cliffhanger. Don't watch this movie!! The movie has many flaws and is just such an uncomfortable movie to watch. Don't watch this movie unless you like cliffhangers.

I have always enjoyed those Flannery O'Connor stories where a visitor "changes things." So, too, is writer/co-director Jason Courtland's (with co-director Julia Halperin) Barracuda, about a young woman, Sinaloa (Sophie Reid), who visits her half sister, Merle (Alison Tolman) in Austin for the first time. Sinaola does change things but not as fast as you might expect nor as clearly as I would like.However, I may ask too much because family connections are never straightforward, dealing as we do with layers of biology and experience. In Barracuda (the fish depicted on her dad's guitar and an apt metaphor for her), Sinaloa can barely be accepted into the family, even with her talent and knowledge of her deceased dad's music.Country, bluegrass, and folk music are interwoven with the slow disclosure of the legacies, e.g., dad was "a drunk, a drug addict and a cheater." She's suspected of falsely claiming kinship or arriving to cut herself into the inheritance, which could be considerable given the parcel of land the family owns. Yet, really, most of them, especially her half-sister, are just trying to figure out why she's there and where she's going.The film is successful not letting us deeply onto Sinaloa's psyche except for a flash of her occasional discomfort at family interactions or Merle's suspicious and unlikable mother, Patricia (JoBeth Williams). Slowly, very slowly, Sinaloa's true character and intentions become clearer. Most everything relates to her exclusion from the family--her resolution is dramatic but not surprising.No surprise that Bruce Beresford is a producer of this film, he the director of Tender Mercies, a milder rendition of this film's underlying family disabilities. Like bloodline and family in real life, this thriller has few certainties, exacerbated by the visitor who changes things.If you're patient, you'll enjoy one of the year's oddest and most perplexing indies.