A Long Island life that’s left them

“Diggers” is one of those dialogue-heavy, character-driven films that always seem to attract good actors. Featuring Paul Rudd, Maura Tierney, Josh Hamilton and Ron Eldard, among others, it’s a generally well-executed -- if overly familiar -- tale of a vanishing America, one where the hard-working middle class falls under the heel of a corporation that endangers its way of life.

“Diggers,” written with nostalgic earthiness by Ken Marino, who also costars in the ensemble drama directed by Katherine Dieckmann, is set on Long Island in 1976 and focuses on four friends who are commercial clam diggers, the last in a long line. As their livelihoods fade, they’re forced to face the prospect of moving on, a future they are unwilling or unable to accept. Each man numbs himself in his own way, postponing the inevitable. A death at the film’s beginning sets the characters in motion on their journey from the inertia and ennui that traps them in the dwindling profession and ties them to their small town.

Hunt (Paul Rudd), burdened by cynicism and imagined obligations, takes black-and-white Polaroids of inanimate objects and probably should have left long ago. He’s contrasted with Frankie (Marino), who has real responsibilities -- a houseful of kids and a saintly wife (Sarah Paulson) -- threatened by a drinking problem and a fierce temper.

Cons (Hamilton), a philosophizing pot peddler, and Jack (Eldard), a ladies’ man with forearms the size of anvils, complete the quartet but are mainly present to add color and participate in the inevitable cathartic brawl and compulsory symbolic act required for resolution in such dramas.

The movie is shot through with 1970s detail, from the Carter-Ford presidential race playing out on a barroom TV and the subtle deterioration of the town, to the stirrings of feminism in the female characters.

Hunt’s sister, Gina (Tierney), who works in the local diner, finds freedom by reading “The Hite Report” and acting on it. Lauren Ambrose, as a Manhattanite on a break, has a flirtatious fling with Hunt but clearly controls the relationship.

The cast -- all recognizable from television -- embrace the period and locale, sporting credible facial hair and attempting variable Long Island accents. The wordiness of the script makes the first half of the film feel like an adapted stage play, but the actors are engaging and they convey plausible camaraderie.

Dieckmann balances the comforting, sometimes contentious rhythms of the group’s interactions with the uneasy sense that they are losing both the battle and the war with change. She also contributed Hunt’s stark photographs, which capture fragments of a disappearing civilization.

Archetypal characters and somewhat formulaic plot notwithstanding, “Diggers” has the conviction to avoid tying things up with a bow and allows us the privilege to imagine where its denizens will go afterward.

kevin.crust@latimes.com

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“Diggers.” MPAA rating: R for language, drug use and some sexual content. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes. Exclusively at Landmark’s Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West L.A. (310) 281-8223.