Writer-director Michael Cuesta tries to use the L.I.E (Long Island Expressway) as a metaphor that ties together the lives of a fifteen year old youth and a pedarest ex-Marine. The story might better have been told without it. I never fully understood the metaphor, except that our lives from beginning to end contain many "lies." The story otherwise negotiates fairly well the murky grey of the protanganists lives. The ending was, to me, a cheap shot. Better to have faded to the credits at the end of the previous scene.