Reign Over Me

[andrewducker]

Just watched this and was thoroughly frustrated. On the one hand it's got note perfect performances from a wide variety of great actors, fantastic cinematography of New York and some amazingly scripted and directed scenes. On the other hand it drifts into sentimentality and unbelievability just often enough to leave a terrible taste in my mouth. Don Cheadle's wife lacks so much screen time that she ends up as a two dimensional place holder for "Wife who doesn't understand" (even though the ending shows that it's not actually her fault) and frankly the film could have done with an extra half an hour to let the emotional growth happen at a reasonable pace while we got some more background on characters who went from being glimpsed parts of the background to being of major importance to the plot in no time at all.

This kind of film frustrates me far more than any number of bad movies because you can see the fantastic movie just gagging to get out. In fact it reminds me of Crash (which has the same plus points but also suffered from similar problems), but doesn't pull things off as well. I'll definitely be looking out for future things from the writer/director, because he's so close to getting it right that it hurts.