2007, USA
Crime, Drama, Thriller
READ THE REVIEW AT The Desert Sun.
Extended version:
Good parents will do anything for their children. Does that commitment justify valuing their offspring more than another's?
Director Terry George attempts to answer that question in Reservation Road, and in the process earns a reputation for haunting melodramatics. Anyone with half a heart had an empty tissue box after watching the horrific account in his film, Hotel Rwanda.
The film opens in a charming New England town, as one devoted father enjoys his son's outdoor recital while another takes in a Red Sox game with his son. The former is part of a whole and happy family, the latter from a broken home with limited hours to share. The perfect day ends tragically when the second father, Mark Ruffalo's Dwight, becomes involved in a hit-and-run with the son of Joaquin Phoenix's Ethan.
An ex-husband who is already skating on thin ice for shared custody of his son knows that the slightest wrong move will endanger that, and manslaughter is no small move. Considering his love for his own child, he is wracked with guilt over the accident and Ethan's painful loss.
The cast is filled with actors at the top of their game. Ruffalo, Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly (as Ethan's wife) have each straddled the tricky line between indies and powerhouse dramas, and this film falls into the latter category. However, it falls and then trips over itself trying to squeeze out every last tear from the audience with unnecessary dramatics.
The film would have been interesting if the story (based on John Burnham Schwartz' novel) had focused on the internal struggle of losing a child and the resulting family and neighborhood crisis, but it delves into obsession with reckless abandon.
Instead of searching for comfort, Ethan Googles with fury. Looking for answers others cannot provide used to be portrayed by pouring over library books late into the night but has now materialized through an overused internet connection. The last thing filmgoers want is a chat room conversation; there are more imaginative storytelling methods than this.
The similar struggles of the two fathers provide an interesting overlap of fates, but their crisscrossed lives are excessive. What begins as a cinematic sleight-of-hand when one father is shown starting an action and the other completes it becomes a series of implausible events, especially when Dwight is assigned Ethan's case to find the killer. The idea that these men are two sides of the same coin is over the top in a small town where apparently they have never met.
What should be a small drama from a capable cast becomes a misdirected pull at sympathies. One father becomes obsessed with revenge, the other withdrawn from guilt. There is no need to create a thriller from such tragedy, and it is a shame to see George slide down that slippery slope.