Tough stuff, but good stuff; my friend who insisted I watch this was right to champion it. And it had more warmth in it than the movie I imagined after reading two or three reviews in New York papers when it was showing there at the IFC in autumn, 2005. I'm sorry the descriptions put me off seeing 'Keane' back then, because its painful nature made it hard to concentrate on it in my house.<br /><br />However there is a significant plus in home viewing due to a major extra on the DVD version of 'Keane': the alternate shorter edit made up by Steven Soderbergh. Though I didn't have the patience to review both versions in toto I'd say Soderbergh made a snappier version, and I can see why he would have done that because the original version's first 30 minutes seem interminable, I thought I'd watched an hour and it was half that. Soderbergh is wise to put the looking-for-work moment very early rather than after 38 minutes, because it is better to start out with that. Soderbergh also held back a lot of the talking-to-himself passages and the hunting-for-the-daughter bus station sequence -- which are so grueling and disturbing -- until later, so we aren't too heavily hit too soon with Keane's severe mental problems. This is important because Keane does want to appear normal and is capable of doing so -- otherwise the whole relationship with the mother of the little girl would not have developed.<br /><br />A fine performance by the actor who plays Keane, Damian Lewis.<br /><br />In fact a lot of the reviews were very favorable, if not ecstatic. And this is how it has to be: this movie is good, but it's not for everyone. In grim realism 'Keane' is comparable to Debra Granik's melancholy but convincing 'Down to the Bone' (also shown in NYC in late 2005). 'Keane'is different from the latter in containing elements of mystery and being at times almost unbearably suspenseful. And Kerrigan gets us so close to his troubled character that we're taken to a hard place.<br /><br />Because of Kerrigan's sympathy and actor Damian Lewis's restraint I found myself more than once indulging in the unnerving thought that in similar circumstances I might not behave a lot more sanely than this myself. Or maybe I'm not any more sane. This film as some have noted is not only a very specific account of a possibly schizophrenic man, but also a study of urban angst, a depiction of how crazy-making urban spaces can become for every person who approaches them without armor.Michael Atkinson's statement about this is perhaps a bit too sweeping - "Keane" (he says) "is a painfully specific figure but at the same time a totem, lean and frightening, for a morass of modern anxieties" - but the borderline between Keane and us does indeed at times become hauntingly blurred. <br /><br />Certainly students of film editing will gain something from comparing the two versions by Kerrigan and Soderbergh. The finale is devastating. And the same in both versions. I have not seen Kerrigan's other movies but he obviously has carved out a niche for himself in which he operates with some distinction.