Jack Nicholson brings new life to the bitter old man archetype in director Alexander Payne's newest stab at Heartland America, "About Schmidt." One of the best American films of 2002, "About Schmidt" is remarkably dry and appropriately laconic. After the searing "Citizen Ruth" and the deliberate and melancholy "Election," "About Schmidt" is Payne's greatest work to date, as well as his third collaboration with screenwriter Jim Taylor. Together they have over the course of three films carved an underrated niche of satire about state of America. Nicholson plays the retired Omaha insurance man, Warren Schmidt, who must find new substance to his life following the loss of his wife to a stroke.

In an attempt to connect with his beloved only daughter, Jeannie (Hope Davis, "Hearts in Atlantis"), before she marries the mullet-toting waterbed salesman Randall Hertzel (Dermot Mulroney of "My Best Friend's Wedding"), Schmidt takes to the road in his insanely large Winnebago, an item his wife Helen forced him to purchase before her death. He also begins a correspondence with a six-year old Tanzanian boy named Ndugu whom he has adopted for $22 a day after watching an exploitive bleak infomercial.

Along the way Schmidt finds time to reconnect with his past and meet the people that populate the great American Midwest. Schmidt's trip is less the clichd American roadtrip than it is one man's journey for something -- anything at all -- in the face of death and nothingness.

Even before the traumatic death of his wife, Schmidt begins a 180 degree change of spirit and politics. The first half of the film is the record of Schmidt's shift from the inbred, right wing of the middle-class Midwest, and the second half tracks his shift to the affectionate liberal left. Rush Limbaugh sounds in Schmidt's car during an unplanned trip to Dairy Queen, and Schmidt now sees himself sympathizing with an American Indian attendant on the road, proclaiming, "Those guys really got a raw deal."

Once again Payne is ingenious in his political overtones. His characters mark a departure from and refusal of conservatism but also awareness and fear of the extremes of the left.

The director has as much sympathy for Schmidt and his interactions with the hippies that constitute Randall's gaudy family as he does the necessary departure from the conservative confines of the Midwest.

Nowhere is this delicate balance more apparent than in Schmidt's impromptu relationship with the mother of his soon to be son-in-law, played to type by Kathy Bates ("Rat Race").

Payne exhibits a command of style, which is almost complete in its disregard for any style. From the ennui of the static opening montage to Schmidt's return home, Payne's film is completely devoid of even a "bad" aesthetic. Rather, the director lets the story, scenes and characters speak for themselves outside the defining confines of overarching stylization.

One of the only stylistic flourishes in the entire movie comes when Schmidt waits for daughter Jeannie's return to Omaha for her mother's funeral. The camera is situated directly behind Nicholson's head, with only his head in focus, as passengers exit the gate the camera slowly shifts focus to bring Jeannie into focus as she approaches her father. Once again the emphasis is on understatement.

While most audiences will be drawn to the picture to see bad boy Nicholson in a "different" role, his very performance is the grounding of the emotion and irony in the script. Most critics have been quick to lavish praise upon Nicholson, and, indeed, it is well deserved. Nicholson portrays Schmidt with a detachment, disorientation and observance that bring a melancholy sympathy for his character while deriding the apparent gimmick of the film. Nicholson effectively transcends his cast type to bring life to the working class hero that is Schmidt.

We first learn about Nicholson's character through Schmidt's friend Ray's speech at Schmidt's retirement dinner (steak of course, the beginning of an important and cynical meat motif) in which he applauds Schmidt for "doing his job." This depiction and affirmation of Schmidt's character is echoed in a later scene, in which Schmidt visits a Pioneer landmark, proclaiming that he is in fact "nothing compared to the heroic deeds of these settlers." It is obvious, though, that Payne and Taylor are compassionate for the everyday working man that Schmidt represents, just as much as they are irritated with the right-wing -- and hippies.

The bitter, reticent retreat portrayed in the film becomes very literal at the film's climax as Nicholson speaks at his daughter's wedding. What makes the scene ultimately devastating are not its figurative implications, but the fact that the same type of naive straight-faced lie that is so distinctly American. And, it all comes to a close in Payne's final scene, which brings together the running "dear Ndugu" gag close to home. It is a symbol of hope, which balances the continual bleakness of Schmidt's situation, as instantly funny as it is inevitably touching.