Guest
Slick salesman Jimmy Starks (Pearce) has auto problems in a small New Mexico town and while his car is in the shop he visits low-rent fortune teller Vacaro (J.K. Simmons) to pass the time. The supposed seer tells him he will have good fortune soon, but looking deeper relates the information that his future is blank, and he is safe only until the first snow of winter beyond which there is no future to foretell. The act upsets Jimmy and rekindles old transgressions and makes him feel he is on a collision course with destiny especially when an old friend Vincent (Shea Whigham) returns from a jail sentence that was longer because Jimmy “sold him out.“ Jimmy becomes obsessed with knowing more of his future and re-visits Vacaro but the old man can only tell the salesman that he has related to him all he can see. Jimmy feels that Vincent has returned to kill him and that he must do something to change the course of his future but Vacaro convinces him to accept his fate. One theme referenced in the film (by the radio announcer) is the idea of the Sword of Damocles.
