Reservation Road - B

In theaters. Rated R, 102 minutes. Trailer.

Reservation Road is a wrenching drama about a car accident that changes the lives of two families. Mark Ruffalo and Mira Sorvino are the divorced parents of 12 year old Luke, and Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly are the parents of Josh. The film opens with Mark Ruffalo hurrying home with Luke after a Red Sox game. He averts his eyes for a second, and when he overcorrects his car, he hits and instantly kills Josh, thus setting the film in motion.

Ruffalo hesitates but then decides (because of the tenuous custody situation with his beloved son) not to turn himself in. Joaquin's family is devastated and the scenes where he and Connelly and their extended family attempt to deal with their loss are well done and believable, if difficult for this parent to watch. After the initial shock, Joaquin becomes fixated on finding his son's killer, and decides to hire a lawyer to help....Ruffalo's partner takes the case on without consulting him, and Ruffalo is now Joaquin's attorney.

The film parallels the agony of the two men, and their individual scenes are very good. Joaquin is earnest as a broken man trying to fill the hole in his heart, and Ruffalo is effective as a man trying to make amends and correct his inherited flaws and have a good relationship with his son. The scenes regarding the death of the child were almost unbearable for me, because it really is any parent's worst nightmare to lose a child.

Director Terry George can tell a good story, as he showed in Hotel Rwanda (A-), but for some reason this wasn't as resonant as I expected it to be. There were probably too many characters to get to know in just 102 minutes, and he uses 5 minutes to remind us that the suffering depicted in the film is just a drop in the ocean of the suffering in Africa and the East (a classroom scene). The ending is emotional and tense, but not effective.

This was one of my most anticipated movies of the year because of the cast/director, the subject matter, and the excellent trailer. The film did not live up to my expectations, but wasn't as dreadful as some of the reviews made it out to be.
The reviews for this film have been all over the place, and my guess is that those with children of their own liked it much more than those that don't have children. The emotions and weight of the film are very challenging for a parent to watch, unless you're the type of parent that would take your kid to see this movie.