A nineteen-year-old Catholic seminarian falls for a twenty-five-year-old female card shark/pool hustler, impregnates her, and marries her.  The seminarian’s mother digs up the pool hustler’s deep, dark past and uses it to convince her to divorce the seminarian, and give up the baby.  Twelve years later, mama/shark/hustler wants her baby back, and she makes plans to do so using the only means at her disposal: playing high-stakes pool.

Compelling films have been constructed on flimsier premises.

Writer and director Chris Eigeman follows his plot outline faithfully to its logical conclusion in Turn the River (rated R for language).  Hard-living Kailey (Famke Janssen) plays poker and pool, smokes drinks, sleeps on pool tables -- and never once eats anything.  Her son, twelve-year-old Gulley (newcomer Jaymie Dornan), meanwhile, divides his time between a stiff and confining Catholic school and his toxic father, David (Matt Ross).  Kailey begins a clandestine correspondence with Gulley with the help of her mentor Quinn (played by a gruff, but loveable, Rip Torn).  Kailey meets Gulley in the park before school every few weeks, exchanges letters with him through Quinn, plays games of pool, and socks away her winnings in the back of her truck. [more]