Adrien Brody (The Thin Red Line, Summer Of Sam) stars in the low-key drama Restaurant as a sensitive, alcoholic playwright and bartender living in Hoboken. It's there that a decidedly off-Broadway production of his latest play will be staged, and there he works at the titular restaurant, home to a tidy microcosm of contemporary New Jersey life. Shortly into the film, Brody initiates his second interracial relationship by courting pretty singer-waitress Elise Neal (Scream 2), a new love that complicates the restaurant's already complex, if generally peaceful, race relations. At the same time, it reminds Brody's co-workers of the dissolution of his previous relationship (with Lauryn Hill), which prompted his film-opening plummet off the wagon. Well-acted by a large and talented ensemble (whose ranks include Cosby Show refugee Malcolm-Jamal Warner), Restaurant covers a lot of territory in its two hours. Almost too much, in fact: At times, it resembles a drastically scaled-back version of John Sayles' City Of Hope struggling to move beyond its claustrophobic set restrictions. Director Eric Bross (who previously teamed with the terrific Brody for Tenbenny) and writer Tom Cudworth keep things moving, and deserve credit for placing their deeply considered, if not particularly deep, observations on race front and center. But there's a spark missing from Restaurant. It would make a really promising TV pilot, but as a movie it feels far too tentative.