November 30, 2001  |  When I first reviewed Diamond Men more than a year ago at the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival, I kinda-sorta damned it with faint praise: This “appealingly low-key comedy-drama with a satisfying O. Henry-style twist ... will be a hard sell in theatrical release, but may shine in home-video and cable venues.”

Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, I offered a judgment that I hoped would be proven wrong.

Unfortunately, this little gem subsequently has received only spotty exposure in moviehouses here and there, and likely won't begin to find its largest and most appreciative audience until it opens at Blockbusters everywhere.

Which why I urge you to run, not walk, to see Diamond Men sparkle at its unassumingly compelling best on a big screen while you still can.

It's a little movie with a great big selling point: Robert Forster's subtly nuanced and effortlessly engaging portrayal of Eddie Miller, a jewelry salesman who's forced to train his own replacement after 30 years on the road.

Maybe you've been following Forster's up-and-down career since John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) and Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (1969).

Or perhaps you didn't notice him until his Oscar-nominated comeback in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown (1997), or his Oscar-worthy supporting turn in Joe Mantegna's under-rated film of David Mamet's Lakeboat (produced in 1999, but not released -- again, only spottily -- until 2001).

Either way, prepare yourself for good news: Forster's still a paradigm of self-effacing professionalism -- which may explain why he was attracted to the role of Eddie Miller in the first place -- and he's never been better than he is here, which is very good indeed.

After recovering from a heart attack, Eddie finds he is uninsurable, a major handicap in a job that requires him to travel with jewelry samples worth more than a million dollars.

He's less than impressed by Bobby (Donnie Wahlberg, Mark's older brother), the younger, crasser and far less experienced salesman who's being groomed for the job.

But as the two men travel together by car to various small-town stores throughout Pennsylvania, they overcome their differences -- one's a jazz-loving introvert, the other's a heavy-metal party animal -- and an unlikely friendship forms.

OK, I admit it: We're dealing once again with the attraction of opposites. And, yes, it's usually a pretty risky thing to hang an entire plot on such a flimsy device. But if I can be forgiven the use of another cliché, Forster and Wahlberg bring out the best in each other, even when their characters are grating on each other's nerves.

Hoping to cheer up his widowed mentor, Bobby takes Eddie to the Altoona Riding Club, a backwoods massage parlor run by a sexy buddy (Jasmine Guy), for some R&R. Romance blooms and robbers intrude as the plot proceeds, but writer-director Dan M. Cohen refrains from sentimental excess and cheap melodrama. More important, Cohen takes just enough time to develop a nicely quirky relationship between the button-down Eddie and the free-spirited Katie, a masseuse played with amusingly odd, keep-you-guessing intensity by Bess Armstrong.

As for that O. Henry-style ending, well, you just might find it a little hard to believe. But once you've spent sufficient time with these characters, you'll want to believe it, which is all that really matters.