A new railway has a devastating effect on a small Jewish community in 19th-century Poland, threatening their village with death by lack of trade. So farmer Dovid (Townsend) approaches the local squire (Hauer) to buy some of his land and build a station.
Unfortunately, Ben Hopkins' feature debut meanders away from the core story of the battle over the railway station land, and concentrates instead on the character of Simon (Taylor), a deranged lad cast out of the village for having the evil eye.
There are some intelligent performances here, especially from Hauer who, surprisingly, hints at his pre-straight-to-vid glory days, but they're cast adrift in a slow-moving tide of sentimentality and mixed-up mysticism.
