Tom Skerritt moves through "East of the Mountains" like a hobbled wraith. His character, Dr. Ben Givens, is a Seattle surgeon dying of cancer. His cheeks are sunken, his breath is punctuated by gasps and his movements … Those movements convey his suffering with every cautious, deliberate step he takes. He has to will himself to stand, to walk, to meet the day. And he's sick and tired — literally — of doing so. He's a man who has given up. He's facing the end and he wants to hasten his end. So before the movie is 10 minutes old, he's pressing a shotgun muzzle against his forehead and struggling with the impulse to pull the trigger. The question then is where does the picture go from there. The answer is there in the title. Loosely based on the 1999 novel of the same title by Bainbridge Island author David Guterson (Thane Swigart wrote the screenplay adaptation), the movie charts Givens' journey from Seattle to east of the Cascades where, in the territory where he was born and grew up, he intends to do away with himself. A homecoming, and a departure. He's got it all planned out. He tells his daughter (played by Mira Sorvino) that he's going on a hunting trip. He doesn't tell her he won't be coming back. (He hasn't told her of his illness.) Under the direction of S.J. Chiro, Skerritt invests his character with a profound, quiet melancholy. Silver-haired and very soft-spoken, the Seattle-based actor brings great dignity to the part. In addition to being terminally ill, Givens is also mourning the recent death of his wife, claimed by a wasting disease. It's all too much. He's grief-stricken and without hope. But the movie itself is far from hopeless. East of the mountains, he finds a measure of redemption in the kindness of strangers. A cheerful young couple picks him up from the side of the road after his car breaks down. They're puzzled when he asks to be dropped off a few miles away at a wide spot in the road so he can trek off into the great wide open with his beloved hunting dog, a Brittany spaniel named Rex. Later, in a significant departure from Guterson's book, he's befriended by a Latina veterinarian (played engagingly by Annie Gonzalez).