Duane is played by David Schwimmer in one of those performances that transform the way we think about an actor. "Friends" was a beloved show but like all popular shows, it fixes its actors in our minds; their TV character is like a ghost standing beside every other role they play. No one stands beside Duane Hopwood, who is all by himself on those lonely winter mornings in Atlantic City, riding his bicycle home from his job as a pit boss in the casinos. A bicycle, because his license has been revoked.

The movie has so many things right. It understands that alcoholics reach a point where their friends are mostly other people on the same drinking schedule. They date out of bars, because that is where they meet people. On Thanksgiving they cannot go home because they no longer have one, but are invited to dinner at the homes of friends, where they feel even more spectacularly alone.

It knows this, too: That alcoholics don't think they're alcoholics. "I'm not a drunk," they say. Sure they get drunk, but that's what they do, not what they are. What's a drunk, anyway? Some bum under a bridge with a pint in a brown paper bag? Duane has endangered a daughter he loves, lost a family he cherishes, been through traffic and divorce court, and yet cannot stop himself from going to a bar after work. Sometimes he drinks way too much. Sometimes he drinks too much. Sometimes he drinks almost too much. Sometimes he doesn't drink enough. Those are the only four sometimes for an alcoholic.

"Duane Hopwood" is not however a movie about drinking, and it lacks spectacular scenes of colorful alcoholism. It is more about waking up at the wrong time of day, working through a hangover, having times when your good essential nature shines through, and hating it that the woman who loves you now loves someone else, because she must.

As Linda, his wife, Janeane Garofalo is precise and kind, caring for the man she married, not wanting to hurt him, but too wise to share his disease. There could be spectacular scenes of overacting and souped-up drama in their relationship, but unless the drunk is also violent, those rarely happen; it is more sadness and loss, with an occasional moment of acting-out, as in the baseball bat scene, where the drunk is playing a confused role generated by his murky grief.

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