Very Serious film stays in shallow end

  • By Robert Horton Herald Movie Critic
  • Thursday, October 18, 2007 3:39pm
  • LifeGo-See-Do

The summer movie season surely has been wiped away by a flurry of ultra-serious fare, with each weekend bringing movies more somber than the previous week’s. I know it’s awards season, but if this keeps up we’ll all be thoroughly depressed by mid-December.

I jest. Actually, it’s nice to see movies that attempt grown-up ideas. But, as “Reservation Road” reminds us, seriousness is not a guarantee of quality.

“Reservation Road,” based on a novel by John Burnham Schwartz, traces the fallout from a family tragedy. A child is killed one night, on a road leading from one Connecticut suburb to another.

The father (Joaquin Phoenix) of the dead boy becomes obsessed with finding the driver of the hit-and-run car, which he must do because the police are almost comically lax about investigating the case. Meanwhile, the man’s wife (Jennifer Connelly) grows increasingly concerned as he disengages from their surviving child (Elle Fanning).

We also follow the tortured saga of the hit-and-run driver (Mark Ruffalo), a lawyer with a long history as a screw-up. He doesn’t tell anybody about the accident, certainly not his skeptical ex-wife (Mira Sorvino). The fact that his own son is about the same age as the dead boy is a reminder of his guilt.

Even worse, the grieving father ends up asking this lawyer for help in pressuring the police to keep up their investigation. The lawyer’s dilemma makes him by far the most interesting character in the picture.

It’s a good part for Mark Ruffalo, the marble-mouthed actor who has bounced from role to role since the terrific “You Can Count on Me,” without quite breaking through to stardom. He wears a pained expression throughout this one, as though bearing a lifetime’s worth of stupid decisions.

Phoenix is also good at being tortured (see last week’s gloomy “We Own the Night”), even if it takes a while to get used to him in an ordinary domestic milieu.

The actresses, Oscar winners both, fare less well in this male-oriented movie. Sorvino has a very limited role, while Connelly, despite a couple of big scenes, is primarily there to walk into the room and nag Phoenix about getting off the Internet.

Director Terry George got hold of a compelling subject in “Hotel Rwanda,” but this movie reveals his weaknesses. For instance, the establishing shots of Life in America were so random and flabby they almost put me to sleep. For all its serious intent, “Reservation Road” doesn’t cut deep.

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