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Written by Roger Moore, McClatchy-Tribune
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Wednesday, 21 March 2007 |
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REIGN OVER ME
4 stars (out of 5)
Cast: Adam Sandler, Don Cheadle, Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler
Director: Mike Binder
Running time: 2 hours
Industry rating: R for language and some sexual references
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It was a smart move, pulling "Reign Over Me" from last fall's release schedule. Perhaps the world just isn't ready for an Adam Sandler Oscar nomination.
This film, from the writer-director of "The Upside of Anger," shows Sandler as we've never seen him before — broken-hearted, lost, in a grief-numbed daze.
Good.
The lowest-common denominator comic plays a dentist whose life ended when his wife and children died on Sept. 11. It's an amazing turn, so amazing, in fact, that it's distracting. The on-screen tension comes from waiting for Sandler to screw up. Even though he still can't manage anger in any realistic way, he never breaks character here. It's a brittle, surprising performance, with little patches of humor and warmth.
Don Cheadle stars as Alan Johnson, a dentist who recognizes this drifting, disheveled guy on a street scooter as his college roommate. One problem — Charlie Fineman (Sandler) doesn't remember him.
Alan knows what happened to Charlie Fineman. But Alan himself is lonely. Maybe his wife (Jada Pinkett Smith) is over-scheduling his life. Maybe he feels guilty about not reconnecting with a guy who's hurting. Something has to explain why Alan disrupts his family, his practice and his life over trying to "help" Charlie Fineman think about what Charlie Fineman won't let himself remember. He's so broken he can't even crawl into a bottle.
"I can't drink I can't drink I can't drink."
Charlie has retreated into himself. He plays drums in a thrash band. He decorates and redecorates his kitchen. He wastes days at a time on a video game. He doesn't practice dentistry, doesn't interact with people, is suspicious of everyone and won't even speak to his in-laws (Melinda Dillon and Robert Klein).
"Reign Over Me" takes its title from a Who song, "Love Reign O'er Me," and is symbolic of the adolescent past of all-night movie festivals, rock bands and video games that Charlie hides in.
And as dysfunctional as Charlie plainly is, writer-director Mike Binder struggles to put us in his shoes. It's a movie about a simple, painful question — how do you get over something like that?
"Reign" isn't as lean as that central story. There's a needless and nonsensical distraction from a woman (Saffron Burrows) who stalks Alan, sees his therapist pal (Liv Tyler) and is carrying a different sort of anguish around with her.
But Binder writes these wonderful scenes — in a record store, where Charlie meets and "makes" a therapist in disguise, in a dental practice where partners gang up on Alan. He concocts such wonderful characters (he even plays one, a financial adviser to Charlie). No wonder everyone from Donald Sutherland to John de Lancie took roles in this. Even a character with just one scene has a very good scene to play.
If "United 93's" relatively small audience tells us anything about ourselves, it's that we don't want to think about that awful day in 2001 any more. "Reign Over Me" is not a movie about those who won't let themselves go back there. It's about those who can't. | Only registered users can write comments.
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