Arguably the most shocking scene in Abel Ferrara's notorious 1993 policier Bad Lieutenant (and there are plenty of candidates) could serve as an instructional video on heroin injection, a step-by-step exercise in turning powder into liquid and bringing it to a fresh vein on Harvey Keitel's arm. Where other directors might have cut straight to the needle or the damage done, Ferrara stays remarkably attuned to the business of everyday life, the mundane details that are literally or figuratively left on the cutting-room floor. Distilled to its essence, Ferrara's riveting new day-in-the-life thriller 'R Xmas only has one major incident, a kidnapping that occurs at nearly the halfway mark. The rest of the film centers on a young couple with immigrant roots living out their own perilous version of The American Dream, holding tight to an upper-middle-class lifestyle by running drugs to dealers on New York City street corners. This means leaving their beloved daughter with a nanny, driving their BMW from a high-rise apartment to a secret location, and spending long hours prepping tiny bags of heroin and divvying out the cash payroll. Dull work, Ferrara implies, but it pays the bills. A lean, well-contained slice-of-life at 83 minutes, 'R Xmas finds the director making a confident return to the hard-nosed realism on which he's staked his maverick reputation. Best of all, the film is a showcase for actress Drea de Matteo (The Sopranos), who plays a leggy crime mistress with such trash-talking ferocity that she instantly commands every room she enters, even the ones packed with snarling lowlifes. More surprising still is her unwavering loyalty to Dominican husband Lillo Brancato Jr., a middle-man pusher whose lack of street smarts and business sense puts their family in jeopardy with rival dealers and corrupt cops. When Ice-T and his undercover cronies kidnap Brancato for an unspecified sum, de Matteo is given little time to scrape together enough loose cash to set him free. The pistol-fire exchanges between the tough-as-nails de Matteo and the incredulous Ice-T—who simply can't believe she would go to such lengths to rescue this inept, weak-willed cretin—are the highlight of 'R Xmas, which gets a real charge out of the two actors squaring off. After their confrontation, Ferrara can't quite figure out how to bring the story to a close, and the odd political sentiments that frame the film (something about the last days before Giuliani took over as mayor) don't offer much satisfaction. But when he sticks to the fascinating grind of married dealers eking out a living, with equal emphasis on bagging heroin and tracking down an out-of-stock Christmas doll for their daughter, 'R Xmas draws a neat parallel between the crime world and its white-collar counterpart.