Registering for her high school reunion at a Chicago hotel, photographer Beth Cappadora momentarily turns her back on her sons, Vincent and Ben, aged 7 and 3. Ben disappears. Despite a massive search by Detective Supervisor Candy Bliss (who befriends Beth and family) and police and volunteers, Ben is not found. Beth sinks into a numbed depression while her husband Pat holds the family together.
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Nine years later, Pat and Beth have moved to Chicago to open a restaurant. When a neighborhood 12-year-old offers to cut their grass, Beth is stunned: “Sam” looks just like the age-projection pictures of Ben. Fingerprints confirm his identity. The boy is returned to the Cappadoras.
But all is not happy. Although the woman who kidnapped him is long dead, Sam has a deep connection with the man he calls Dad, George Karras – a man innocent of wrongdoing, being unaware that the woman he married had kidnapped the son he wound up adopting. Sam would rather spend holidays with the Karras family he knows than with this family of Cappadora strangers. Daughter Kerry needs to be reassured that Sam is just adjusting to, not disliking, his found family. Teenaged Vincent, despite his brotherly love, resents his parents' relative lack of attention for himself, and suffers quiet guilt over his part in losing Ben. Sam begins sneaking out at night to sleep at his former house. Pat's sweeping optimism about Sam's adaptability clashes with Beth's chronic analytic seriousness, causing a rift in their marriage. Against Pat's wishes, Beth sadly concludes they must send Sam back. Soon afterward, Vincent lands in jail for drunk driving. Visiting, Sam shares with him some newly recovered memories that will have a profound effect on their relationship, and on both families.
The review of this Movie prepared by vjm
