Morgan Bell
Kynaston
REVIEW: Reign Over Me
March 8th 2008 05:03
Directed & Written: Mike Binder (Man About Town, The Upside of Anger)
Starring: Adam Sandler (Click, Spanglish, Anger Management, Happy Gilmore), Don Cheadle (Crash, Traffic, The Family Man), Jada Pinkett-Smith (Collateral, Ali), Liv Tyler (Armageddon, Inventing The Abbotts), Saffron Burrows (Circle of Friends, Deep Blue Sea, Enigma), Donald Sutherland (A Time To Kill, Six Degrees of Separation)
Charlie Fineman (Sandler) lost his whole family on one of the planes on 911. We enter his story now, five years on, where he has been compensated by the government with a ridiculous amount of money and is suffering from post-traumatic stress. Charlie is unable to deal with the grief of losing his family and financially he no longer needs to work so he has set up a child-like lifestyle for himself where he is not confronted by the past and can pretend his wife and daughters never existed at all. By chance his old college room-mate Alan Johnson (Cheadle) crosses paths with Charlie again and he is invited in to be a companion in a world of video games, old vinyl albums, Chinese food, movie marathons, playing music in a band, and riding around on a motorized scooter all day. Johnson is a successful dentist who is married with a family of his own and feeling suffocated and lonely in a lifestyle that is all responsibility and no socializing or spontenaity. Charlie has too much freedom while Johnson has too little. This is a heart-wrenching and tragic film with incredibly sensitive and vulnerable characters. Sandler is outstanding as Charlie, a raging timebomb, so serenely composed and placid one moment and then uncontrollably agitated and volatile the next. When Sandler is laid-back and mellow his floppy hairstyle causes him to bear an uncanny resemblance to Bob Dylan. When he cracks he is frightening, his heart is heavy and his pain radiates out of the screen. This film has a brooding atmosphere and is filmed beautifully against a city backdrop, it maintains suspense and is impossible to turn away from as Charlie sets on a collision course with the law, the mental health profession, those who love him, and his own sanity. An amazing portrait of a man in grief.
Starring: Adam Sandler (Click, Spanglish, Anger Management, Happy Gilmore), Don Cheadle (Crash, Traffic, The Family Man), Jada Pinkett-Smith (Collateral, Ali), Liv Tyler (Armageddon, Inventing The Abbotts), Saffron Burrows (Circle of Friends, Deep Blue Sea, Enigma), Donald Sutherland (A Time To Kill, Six Degrees of Separation)
Charlie Fineman (Sandler) lost his whole family on one of the planes on 911. We enter his story now, five years on, where he has been compensated by the government with a ridiculous amount of money and is suffering from post-traumatic stress. Charlie is unable to deal with the grief of losing his family and financially he no longer needs to work so he has set up a child-like lifestyle for himself where he is not confronted by the past and can pretend his wife and daughters never existed at all. By chance his old college room-mate Alan Johnson (Cheadle) crosses paths with Charlie again and he is invited in to be a companion in a world of video games, old vinyl albums, Chinese food, movie marathons, playing music in a band, and riding around on a motorized scooter all day. Johnson is a successful dentist who is married with a family of his own and feeling suffocated and lonely in a lifestyle that is all responsibility and no socializing or spontenaity. Charlie has too much freedom while Johnson has too little. This is a heart-wrenching and tragic film with incredibly sensitive and vulnerable characters. Sandler is outstanding as Charlie, a raging timebomb, so serenely composed and placid one moment and then uncontrollably agitated and volatile the next. When Sandler is laid-back and mellow his floppy hairstyle causes him to bear an uncanny resemblance to Bob Dylan. When he cracks he is frightening, his heart is heavy and his pain radiates out of the screen. This film has a brooding atmosphere and is filmed beautifully against a city backdrop, it maintains suspense and is impossible to turn away from as Charlie sets on a collision course with the law, the mental health profession, those who love him, and his own sanity. An amazing portrait of a man in grief.
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Comment by Luke
Old Movies
Cane Toad Warrior
i'm keen to see this movie. I love Don Cheedle!
Comment by Anonymous
My dislike of Sandler transferred to his Charlie and I couldn't shake that the whole movie. However, I could empathise with him and I did shed a tear or two in the touching scenes with his in laws.
I'm glad I saw it, thanks for the heads up.