Night Always Comes is worth seeing. Not because it’s a good movie – it’s barely average – but because Vanessa Kirby gives a jaw dropping performance as a woman trying to save her family from being evicted from their home.

Night Always Comes begins with Lynette (Vanessa Kirby) nervously and repeatedly reminding her mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to pick up a check for a $25,000 loan and meet her at 2:30 that afternoon to sign the papers so they can buy the house they are living in. Otherwise she, her big brother Kenny (Zack Gottsagen), who has Down’s Syndrome, and her mom will be evicted in the morning.

Mom buys a car with the money. They are so screwed!

Lynette decides to save the family by running all over Portland to put together $25,000 before morning. She works two jobs and turns tricks sometimes. But tonight she doesn’t have time to earn money. She has to GET money.

She goes to see a generous john (Randall Park), but the minute she asks him for big money, their relationship ends. She visits a girlfriend who owes her $3000. She picks up Cody (Stephan James) who works nights in the bar where she works. She presses him into helping her with some illegal stuff. She hits up Tommy (Michael Kelly) who she knew as a teen. She tries to sell some of the stuff she acquired illegally and gets beaten up and almost raped.

To put it mildly, she has one hell of a night. For part of the night, she’s dragging her frightened brother Kenny around with her.

This is a family on the edge. They have lived with hard times and bad decisions always. As the night wears from one fraught situation to another, we learn something about Lynette and her past with her family and with the people she sees during the night. She’s a total mess but she has a good heart and she wants to save her brother from going into a group home.

I thought the way the movie ended should have been the way it began, with Lynette making a choice she should have made long ago. But, of course, the point of the story was that it took this one terrible, frantic, night to get her to that choice.

This is an aggravating movie. You just want to shake some sense into some of the characters. But Vanessa Kirby is brilliant. Watch it for her performance.

You can see Night Always Comes on Netflix.