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Reservation Road

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2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The profound effects of the accidental death of a child on three families is vividly portrayed in this dark film by writer/director Terry George ('Hotel Rwanda', Hart's War', 'In the Name of the Father') as adapted and co-written by John Burnham Schwartz on whose novel the film is based. While it seems we are seeing a glut of films dealing with revenge on the part of injured people who feel the Law isn't fulfilling its duty, when a film such as RESERVATION ROAD comes along the theme feels fresh.

Ethan and Grace Learner (Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly) and their children Josh (Sean Curley) and Emma (Elle Fanning) are the 'perfect family', living comfortably in Connecticut, until one night after a picnic where Josh captured fireflies for his sister, the family stops at a roadside station and while Josh releases the fireflies at his mother's request he is hit by a car and killed. The driver of the car is Dwight Arno (Mark Ruffalo) who is trying to return his son Lucas (Eddie Alderson) to his estranged, remarried wife Ruth (Mira Sorvino) after a baseball game that ran too long. Instead of stopping when he hits the child, Dwight drives on, not wanting to upset his son. Within the tragedy of the next week the Learners are devastated and feel the police are not finding the perpetrator. They decide to engage a lawyer to assist the investigation and the lawyer they engage is Dwight, a man so torn by the sadness of his life that he is barely functioning - trying to find some solace in restoring a solid relationship with his son while dealing with the fact that he has killed another family's son. The events that proceed reveal the agonies of the accident and the effect of that death on both Ethan (enraged) and Grace (desperately trying to focus on her remaining child), and on Dwight (obsessed with guilt and driven to thoughts of suicide) and his ex-wife Ruth who acts as an unknowing intermediary. The final effects on each of these bruised people bring a surprising end to the story.

The quality of acting is strong as we have come to expect with the likes of Phoenix, Connelly, Ruffalo and Sorvino, who bring us into the tough story with considerable commitment: we understand the thoughts and drives of each of these sad characters. Adding to the sensitive atmosphere is yet another strong musical score by Mark Isham who understands the fine art of creating a soundtrack that enhances the story. The theme may be a bit repetitive and the script somewhat formulaic, but the emotional effect on the viewer cannot be denied. Grady Harp, April 08

It has been hard to write this review, as I really loved the book and the author did work on the screenplay (which was ultimately trimmed by the director, I believe).

The movie has so many strong points and it deals with one of the most painful losses a parent can endure - and in such a terribly tragic and sudden way, no warning at all.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT: When the Lerner family is driving home one night, they make a stop at a gas station. That is when their son gets out of the car to let some lightening bugs out of a jar, a car comes along, hits him and kills him - and two families' lives are forever changed. Joaquin Phoenix does a fine job as Ethan, the father of the dead boy. His anger is palpable. Also, if you see the DVD make sure you listen to his description of how hard it was for him to channel that anger. He actually had to talk to victims to get a sense of how they felt after losing a child.

It is hard not to feel sorry for both fathers - the one whose son was killed and the one who accidentally was the killer. Dwight Arno is the man who happened to drive into the boy and his pervading sadness is crafted superbly by Mark Ruffalo, an actor who always seems on the edge of sadness to me.

These men have wives, of course, and I don't mean to slight them - or the actresses behind their depiction. Jennifer Connelly is Grace, wife to Ethan and mother of the dead child. Mira Sorvino is equally strong as Dwight's wife, although they are divorced, but share custody of a son.

Having noted the solid acting in this movie, I do have to add that the plot did disappoint, having such high expectations after having read the book. The movie came very, very close to capturing the tone of the book but I think (in this case) the book's style, word choice and tone did not translate well to film. I don't fault the actors and I'm not sure ANY script could have done justice to the book.

What ended up on screen seemed overly long and somehow "off" from the perfection of the book's story. This is a very personal interpretation, of course, and others may well love this movie. Trying to catch the various facets of grief after a child dies is a difficult task for even the best of actors and actresses. Again, listening to Jennifer Connelly, Mark Ruffalo and the others speak about how they approached the movie might give some insight into why they came close - but fell short of the task.

Connelly admits that she could not think of the subject personally or imagine such a tragedy happening to her own child. Joaquin Phoenix felt sympathy towards the other father and had to learn how to dredge up anger and pain. Ultimately, the result is a film with integrity and heart but still lacking the flow and strength that would have made it wholly compelling. Again, my take and bias may come from having read the book and wanting the movie to live up to that.

I also want to note that I am a fan of Terry George, the man who made this movie. I loved Hotel Rwanda. This time around, however, I think the results weren't quite as spectacular.

The Lerner family attends a summer concert featuring their son, Josh. Ethan (Joaquin Phoenix), the dad and a Professor, his wife, Grace (Jennifer Connelly) and their daughter clap enthusiastically when the concert is over. During the drive home, Emma (Elle Fanning, Dakota's sister) has to stop at a gas station to use the restroom. Divorced dad, Dwight Arno (Mark Ruffalo) and his son Lucas (Eddie Arno) are enjoying a Red Sox game when the game goes into overtime prompting Lucas' mom (Mira Sorvino) to call them because they are late. Racing home, Lucas falls asleep as Dwight watches the time tick away. His ex-wife is sure to cause a scene and he doesn't want to ruin the memory of attending the game with his son. Rounding a dark bend, he notices Josh too late and swerves, causing Lucas to bump his head and wake up. Dwight speeds away; convincing himself he hit a log on the side of the road. Ethan watches in horror as his son becomes the victim of a hit and run. Grace and Emma come running out and Ethan tries to comfort them. The police follow some leads, but they have little to go on as Ethan didn't see the license plate or make of the car, he only knows it was an SUV. Someone suggests Ethan hire a lawyer to help make sure the police stay on track and to pursue a civil case, should it become necessary. He walks into Dwight's law office. As the police investigation continues, Ethan becomes more and more obsessed with finding the killer, unable to adequately help Grace or Emma deal with their pain. Dwight also lives in constant fear of being found out and starts to lose sleep with the guilt of what he has done.

"Reservation Road", directed by Terry George ("Hotel Rawnda") and based on the novel by John Burnham Schwartz is a very faithful recreation of the book. Produced by Random House Films, the company who published the book, the filmmakers have given the original material the reverence it deserves, allowing the writer to serve as screenwriter with the director and retaining as much of the book's material as possible.

Both the book and the film are thoughtful and thorough examinations of grief, guilt and trying to achieve redemption. They are also depressing. There is no happy ending here and the films stays true to the book, giving the characters a lot of time to deal with all of the problems this hit and run creates. That said, "Reservation Road" also allows for some very, very good performances from the three leads.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Ethan Lerner. I am so used to seeing him portray young men in their twenties; police cadets, young gangsters, young hustlers, that I didn't think it would be possible to watch Phoenix playing a professor and believe in the performance. But he pulls it off. Complete with beard and moustache, he instantly conveys the physical appearance of a professor and he uses this same demeanor to convince us he is a father of two. From the moment we first see Ethan sitting in the audience at his son's recital, Phoenix makes us believe he is a doting father. It helps that he has bulked up a little, but it goes beyond physical transformations, his attitudes and actions are more thoughtful and help to make the character believable.

As Ethan tries to get back into the swing of life, to try to resume living normal, he attends one of his college classes. As the class discusses the topic of the day, Ethan makes a comment or two, but seems lost in thought, naturally obsessed with the events of his son's death. This scene also helps to cement Phoenix's portrayal of the character, setting it apart from other laughable actor portrayals of smart people. I'm looking at you Denise Richards. I truly, really believed your portrayal of a nuclear scientist in "The World Is Not Enough". Har-har. I have my doubts you can even spell "nuclear".

As the story progresses and we see Ethan become more and more obsessed with finding his son's killer, we can almost feel a palpable sense of anxiety in his every move. He starts to search the local towns for an SUV with a damaged bumper. He joins a number of chat rooms for victims of the same crime, looking for solace.

It is a nice performance showing a maturity I didn't know Phoenix had.

Mark Ruffalo plays Dwight, the type of single dad who always makes the wrong decisions and who is always trying to spend some quality time with his son. Because he is divorced, and trying to split his time with his son, he is a bit scattered, a bit all over the place. Dwight is barely holding everything together and it doesn't help when his ex-wife (Mira Sorvino) is unreasonable and insists he return their son on time, despite a Red Sox game going into overtime.

Because all of these things are going on, on a consistent basis, Dwight always looks a little harried. When he decides to take a cab into work, and he is a few minutes late, no one says anything, giving us the impression this is a regular occurrence. When he seems a bit flummoxed, for any reason, no one really asks any questions. Dwight always looks that way.

Ruffalo fits the role almost perfectly, using his natural hesitations to accentuate the character's natural anxiety. Dwight is afraid. Afraid of losing his son, his job, what little hold he has on the world. Naturally, when he learns of his involvement in the hit and run, something he knew he did, but tried to discount, he becomes even more desperate. He doesn't want to lose his son, and tries to spend extra time with him. Dwight is afraid of being found out, afraid of the police showing up at his door at any time. He seems a bit relieved when he realizes the police have no leads. But just as he feels he can relax, Ethan shows up at their office and asks for help.

Throughout the film, Dwight's guilt seems ready to consume him. But every time he is about to convince, someone says or does something, convincing the single dad he might be able to remain free, something convinces him to remain quiet.

Jennifer Connelly is good as Grace. After the accident, she is so overwhelmed with grief, she can't leave the house. Rather than some hysterical, scenery chewing moment, she plays it quiet and in a matter of fact way giving her role a lot of depth and believability. There is also a scene late in the film when she and Ethan get into a fight. Again, completely believable given what we have witnessed her going through. Connelly has also matured into a fine actress taking a number of high profile supporting roles adding immeasurably to the films she appears in.

Mira Sorvino plays Dwight's ex-wife and hers is the most one dimensional character in the film. With the fewest scenes, it is most difficult for her to establish more than a few traits for her character. In most of her scenes, she is fighting with Dwight (and she has reason to, most of the time) but this also makes her seem unapproachable and bitchy. Late in the film, she is connected to the rest of the story in another way, giving her a little more involvement, but it doesn't make her character as interesting or believable as the rest.

"Reservation Road", Terry George's follow-up to "Hotel Rwanda" is a very good film. But it deals with a difficult story in an uncompromising way, so it will struggle to catch on. If you are interested in fine dramas, you should give it a try.

"Reservation road" is by far one of the most gripping and tense thrillers of the year. The previous similar movie that I keep in mind was the unforgettable classic of Claude Chabrol: "This man must die" .

A fateful night, an unpleasant and disgraced incident will join the lives of two well different families, and so the anger, despair and pain will involve the heart and minds of these uncomfortable parents. In this order of ideas, and after having lost the patience and faith in the judicial system the next step of this troubled father will be to go for legal advise, and so the destiny will gather the prey and hunter face to face.

All the cast was terrific but Jennifer Connelly steals the show . her forceful and demanding performance overpasses the well known limits of the used to become a true reference pattern.

Watch her for instance, at the moment her husband refers her about the incident of the fireflies and observe carefully the dramatic progression of her facial aspects; or the brief but intense dialogue with him at the moment she wants to give all the things of her beloved son.

So, you will have not only a vibrant and riveting thriller, but a first -class performance and a careful camera work all the way through, that will involve you from start to finish.

Absolutely recommended.

The novel Reservation Road explored the relationship between fathers and sons and the emotional hangover that can linger after tragedy. The book did did this effectively, avoiding cheap cliche and sentimentality, and watching this trailer, it looks like they matched the stark and brutal, yet somehow beautiful tones contained in the novel. I'm looking forward to this film.

Human suffering is an interesting subject because of its relative ease in connecting with audiences and evoking emotions. Reservation Road succeeds in emphasizing the catastrophic events of a hit and run accident with astoundingly powerful performances from everyone in the cast. Where it fails is in its documentary approach at portraying the mental aftermath of a tragedy and the dearth of a plausibly satisfactory conclusion. As Reservation Road reluctantly concedes early on, when none of the characters win, neither does the audience.

Ethan Learner (Joaquin Phoenix), his wife Grace (Jennifer Connelly) and their two young children Emma and Josh stop at a gas station on Reservation Road and have their lives unsuspectingly swept out from under them when Josh is killed by a hit-and-run driver. The driver, Dwight Arno (played by Mark Ruffalo), in shock and afraid of losing his own son, who he struggles to see despite strict court orders from a divorce, attempts to hide his damaged SUV and any signs of the crime. But with unnervingly unforeseen coincidences, Dwight is hired as a lawyer to investigate the crime, while his wife tutors little Emma. Wrought with guilt and the fear of judgment by his impressionable young son, Dwight weighs his options as his world crumbles around him. Meanwhile, Ethan, overcome with grief, seeks vigilante justice due to the ineffectiveness of local law enforcement.

First and foremost, the acting is peerlessly superior to just about everything else so far this year. Undeniably Academy Award worthy performances pours forth from Jennifer Connelly, Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo. Each of these characters suffer in different ways, but their portrayals are so accurately riveting that every time they burst into tears, so do we. Few performances are able to elicit such striking emotion from its audience, but Reservation Road's cast does so with ease. Of course, its tragedy-rich plotline is an easy target for sympathy.

Early on it is undeniably apparent that Dwight's flight from the hit-and-run accident was caused by a combination of fear and ignorance. But his continual suffering from his conscience eating away at him allows the audience to take pity, and we don't necessarily want him to die - especially because of his child. This leads to a problem for the audience: the antagonist is made to suffer, allowing for little satisfaction when his sins catch up to him. When every character loses, the audience often also loses out on a satisfactory resolution, in this case leading to a very abrupt finale. Reservation Road makes the mistake of creating very emotionally powerful pieces that overshadow the truncated conclusion and the film as a whole.

While the end itself pales in comparison to the panic-inducing build, credit is due to the nail-bitingly suspenseful and complexly brilliant first two acts. Dwight is unable to completely hide from Ethan's vengeful suspicions due to increasingly unexpected twists. Connelly's tear-jerking anxiety and Emma's innocently naïve queries to her mother add a dash of lemon juice to the wound of death-related heartbreak.

Reservation Road wastes no time careening right into the nerve-racking plot, and with powerhouse performances that won't be forgotten during awards season, it tells a woeful tale with countless layers of grief, anxiety and regret. While it may fail to thoroughly entertain with its "lose-lose" approach, it is a film that is not easily forgotten.

- Mike Massie

A small Connecticut town, two suburban families, one tragedy...Lives ripped apart in the subsequent weeks.

We follow the paths of two fathers - one stricken by grief at the hit-and-run death of his son, and the other, the perpetrator - as they attempt to deal with the tragic events of one split second in time...When one man loses his son, and when the other man makes a hasty decision to drive away.

Mark Ruffalo's performance is pitch perfect as the hit-and-run driver, tormented by fear and guilt - fear of losing his son, whose mother (Mira Sorvino) has primary custody, and who stands ready at any moment to deny contact with his son - and guilt at what he, an attorney, has done. Tortured and tormented...We almost empathize with his plight.

And then on the other hand, Joaquin Phoenix, as the grieving father, and Jennifer Connelly, as the grief-stricken mother, convince us with their overwhelming emotions and the ever-increasing isolation from one another, that nothing will ever make this right until the perpetrator is caught.

The police seem to be pushing the case onto a back burner as no tangible clues come to light.

So the couple seeks legal representation - someone to help push the police to solve the case. And whose firm do they choose to represent them? None other than the one for which the perpetrator works!

We see the suspenseful, emotional and completely engrossing moments unfold as the paths converge - fathers on parallel paths - until resolution comes with a surprising twist.

Reservation Road is a haunting portrayal of tragic events and their aftermath.

Laurel-Rain Snow

Joaguin Phoenix convincingly portrays Ethan Learner, whose son is killed by a criminally negligent driver who flees the scene. Phoenix is an Everyman who is confused, outraged, and vengeful. He becomes obsessed with the thought that the driver will get away with it because the police are not working the case hard enough. He decides to investigate himself. He goes on the Internet seeking others who have been similarly victimized. There is nothing artificial or contrived about his performance.

The rest of the cast seems to follow directions well. They are all clearly competent actors. But there is a lack of conviction. Their performances seem forced.

The film held my interest, but I would not use words like "compelling" or "gripping" to describe it. It's basically a one-note song: a weak man tries to escape justice.

Raw and gritty, the angst in Terry George's `Reservation Road' disturbs without the redeemable satisfaction of an ending that vindicates the one hour and 43 minutes invested in its viewing. Pain and grief drive this tale of two upper echelon fathers living in upper middle class Connecticut. George attempts to alternate the telling of the story from the respective vantage points of each of the main protagonists, as does John Burnham Schwartz in his original novel. He fails somewhat; in attempting to show the similarities between the two he brute forces the end product, somehow homogenizing the bottom line into a passion play of little relevance.

The connection between the two men, Joaquin Phoenix as Ethan Learner, college professor and Mark Ruffolo as Dwight Arno, lawyer, arises when Dwight, already late in delivering his son Lucas to his estranged wife and in jeopardy of breaching his visitation privileges, kills the young and talented cello prodigy, Josh Learner, in a hit and run accident. Wracked with guilty, Dwight fluctuates between knowing he must turn himself in and the realization that his life as it is will irreparably change. Ruffolo plays Arno with such a sick hang dog face that suggests too obvious a culpability that one wonders how anyone who comes into contact with him cannot know of his crime. On the other hand, Phoenix smolders with hatred and helplessness for his son's unknown killer, trawling the Internet at night for some kind of understanding from other families of hit and run victims. His wife, Grace (Jennifer Connelly) equally bereaved wants to move on, concentrating on their other child. We watch with a harried fascination as the Learner's marriage begins to disintegrate--the tragedy is too large for them to weather let along comprehend. There is nothing remarkably psychological about either man's course of thought or action; both move along like automatons preprogrammed to self-destruct. Absolutes like Vengeance and Guilt leave little room for nuanced behaviors.

With just this introductory information, you can already figure out the rest of the plot and it's ending. Eventually, Ethan discovers that Dwight is responsible for his son's death. Their confrontation rewards the audience with little joy at the righteousness of vindication. Instead the predictable climax deflates like a prognosis of terminal cancer; the adjunct players must deal with the aftermath of the inevitable societal chemotherapy and radiation that rips their family immune systems to shreds. The audience watches with equally clinical detachment.

Bottom line? Reminiscent of the hotbed of grief and pain moving the characters in Barbet Schroeder's 1996 film `Before and After', Terry George's `Reservation Road' also focuses on an upper echelon of society living a life fueled by the rewards of education and wealth, yet still trapped by out-of-control events that could happen to anyone of any circumstance but result in crushing tragedy that cannot be reasoned away. Both Mark Ruffolo and Joaquin Phoenix excel in their roles as the prospective fathers, but for the most part, each of these actors' performances borders on caricatures of the emotions they represent rather than full-fledged multi-faceted personalities that are nudged by the other concerns of everyday life. Recommended with reservation.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"

This is a heart-rending film that is relentless both in content and pacing, offering not one single moment of respite. Another reviewer coined it aptly as adopting a "lose-lose" approach. Having said that, it contained remarkable performances; Jennifer Connelly was powerful in a quiet, almost muted way, Joaquin Phoenix displayed a depth and intensity that were almost scorching, holding the entire film together like a taut backbone, his was a monumental performance.