This movie has a very good line when terminally-ill father complains that sonny compares his words to the holy words of God in the good book;the story takes place in a bookstore,often the last refugee for the failed (or soon-to-be ) writer.LDP owns the store and he fires (why? The reason is vague) one of his employees,a clean cut kid ,and he offers the job to a (cured?) serial killer on parole ;he treats him as a friend,probably using him as a character for the book he is writing.There are many plot holes but the final twist takes us off the beaten path ,not a small feat for this kind of low-budget movie;the only thing which is terribly lacking is a genuine director and a screenwriter who could have used some good ideas with better results.Average.

In this rather quirky script and story written by the star of Ambition, Lou Diamond Phillips, Lou is playing aspiring writer Mitchell Osgood who is supporting himself by running a second hand bookshop. He has to have that job because as a writer he's not making it.Ambition was the first film in which Lou Diamond Phillips plays an Asian American. In his mixed bag of ethnicity, part of Lou's heritage is Filipino and he plays one here. He is also besides failed writer and bookshop manager, closest relative to Haing S. Ngor playing his father and whose health care demands are cutting into his time.Lou is taking as an inspiration no doubt, Truman Capote and what he did with In Cold Blood, in the way he was able to capture the souls and personalities of a pair of killers. He's got one in mind now who is coming up for parole played by Clancy Brown. Lou goes to some considerable lengths to befriend him and even fires someone at the bookstore just to get him a job.If you think you've figured out which way Ambition is headed for a conclusion from what I've written you are wrong. The screenplay that Lou Diamond Phillips fashioned here is quite original and will startle you with its conclusion.What a project like Ambition needed was a director like Alfred Hitchcock. Sad to say it didn't get that. Also it didn't have the biggest of budgets to work with.Still it's an interesting work and a treat for fans of Lou Diamond Phillips.

(SPOILERS GALORE) To the other commenters: How jaded do you have to BE to not be moved by the end of this movie, where Clancey Brown pours the bullets into Lou Diamond Phillips hands?!? I also found it convincing ... perhaps because I've known more than my share of damaged people, I believed that that sequence of events would lead an jerk like Phillip's char to have his terminally ill father killed, just to sell his book. I think it *is* possible that Brown's char could be driven to a murderous rage at one time (by the ubiquitous over-bearing mother), but not be a killer, really, once her influence is removed. I love the fact that the plot is so convoluted that you have NO idea where it's going; I've see probably a billion movies, and can predict the outcome in most of them in the first 15 minutes. I appreciate a writer who can be original, and keep me on my toes. Rent it - judge for your self!

...but the result is only partially successful. Part of the problem is that the narrative plods to such a degree that for the most part the whole film seems pointless. It's only in the last 30 minutes or so that you realize what Lou Diamond Phillips (who wrote the script and stars) was up to (SPOILERS FOLLOW): he cleverly and subtly reverses the usual genre formulas, turning his character, who is supposed to be the hero and the person for the audience to identify with, into the real villain of the film, while the now cured (?), ex-psychopathic killer, who is shown to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown throughout the movie, turns out to be the character who must save the day! (END OF SPOLIERS). So this is one of those rare films where you don't know where the story is going just by looking at the video cover, and that alone makes it somewhat recommendable. (**)