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In a Southern town called Southport, a guy with a Southern accent who's from Chicago named Rick (Vince Vaughn) marries the Los Angeles-accented ex-wife (Teri Polo) of Southport boat maker Frank (John Travolta), who does not have a Southern accent, perhaps because Travolta doesn't do accents. Frank's time-shared son Danny (Matthew O'Leary) is distraught about Mom hooking up with Rick--enough to sneak around and discover that Rick is most probably a thief and/or murderer involved in a criminal manner with a amorphously Brooklyn-accented, San Francisco-based slimeball (Steve Buscemi). Later, when the film assumes a Cape Fear-lite position, Rick/Vaughn will threaten all assembled via a skillful fusion of his trademark hyperactive Swingers jerk and his psycho from Psycho. Odd accent issues aside, director Harold Becker keeps things moving with glum professionalism, and Travolta's lost weight, but this inertia-infused Southern Gothic/noir/psycho-killer thriller manqué is decidedly less than its uneasily assimilated parts.