Inquisitive teenage girl in the modern-day South--selling fish with her grandmother out of their house on the river--forges a friendship with the father she's never known, just out of jail after 13 years. As the paroled ex-con who killed a man during a robbery, Tommy Lee Jones adds some hot-tempered fuel to these otherwise juiceless proceedings. Jones, playing the kind of loner who thaws out quickly, overcomes the manufactured grit and sentiment in this script and manages to give an interesting performance. Debuting director Tom Rickman, who also wrote the cliché-ridden script, allows many of the supporting players to overact mercilessly, while newcomer Martha Plimpton is used as the picture's 'noble conscience' (never a good idea). Rickman has so little faith in the 'family audience' he's targeting with this film, he has Plimpton's tomboyish Jonsy declare she "ain't no lezzy"--this so viewers can relax in the knowledge they're only watching an assembly-line sub-Disney movie and not anything more ambitious. The riverfront milieu is attractive, but the hick stereotypes and shady city-folk are enough to try anyone's patience. *1/2 from ****