Review
Film Review
Joaquin Phoenix takes a bravura turn
By Bob Strauss
For the second time in two weeks, a powerful cast led by a spectacular Joaquin Phoenix has made something engrossing and moving out of an occasionally dicey narrative.
"Reservation Road" is yet another revenge story, though it's more in the neighborhood of "In the Bedroom" than "Death Wish" (or, for that matter, "The Brave One"). It plucks parental anguish strings until they're frayed to snapping and tries to pass off some whopper coincidences as things that could easily happen in a leafy little Connecticut town. Kids say the darndest things, making blunt thematic points that they actually know nothing about.
In general, though, the film's script - by John Burnham Schwartz, who wrote the source novel, and director Terry George ("Hotel Rwanda") - provides Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Connelly with abundant opportunities to explore their characters and churn through feelings with all the depth, complexity and intensity they're capable of.
Phoenix and Connelly are Ethan and Grace Learner. They lose their 10-year-old son to a hit-and-run driver one night on the title thoroughfare. This plunges Grace and their surviving daughter, Emma (Elle Fanning, note perfect in every scene), into paralyzing grief and guilt. Ethan, a college professor, initially holds it together for all of them. But he is shaken to the core, and as the police lower the case's priority, he embarks on a methodical, obsessive and eventually unhinged effort to find the driver and make him pay.
Lawyer Dwight Arno (Ruffalo) was the man behind the wheel. A divorced dad, he was bringing his own 11-year-old son, Lucas (fine newcomer Eddie Alderson), back late from a Red Sox game when the Learner boy wandered into the path of his SUV. Troubled enough to begin with - Mira Sorvino strikes a nice balance as his fed-up but not unsympathetic ex-wife - Dwight panics and leaves the scene.
He spends the rest of the movie scurrying to cover up his involvement, wrestling with his conscience and worrying about his relationship with Lucas, the last good thing remaining in his life.
Ruffalo looks a little too obvious like a guilty man in some scenes, but overall brings touching understanding to what many would just write off as a hateful weasel. Connelly does a nice job of charting Grace's partial emotional recovery, and is strongest when the wife tries to connect with her increasingly self-absorbed husband.
But as is the case with the current "We Own the Night," this film belongs to Phoenix. Rarely has anyone charted a man's sorrow and growing rage with the step-by-terrible-step detail the actor lavishes on Ethan.
It's a controlled explosion that grows increasingly uncontainable, until you fear for Ethan's sanity, the safety of those around him and, in fact, that damage may have been done to the actor's own soul. Recent conversations with Phoenix indicate that he's perfectly all right, but it's that kind of totally committed and intricately worked-out performance.
"Reservation Road" may be a downer story with elements that we've seen many times before. But acting this good makes it special and exhilarating.
LA.com
Back Main
