Reservation Road

By Connie Ogle

Two men come apart for different reasons in Reservation Road, but they are linked by the same things: an unthinkable tragedy and the sort of whopping coincidence one usually needs to tune into One Life to Live to witness.

College professor Ethan (Joaquin Phoenix) crumbles when a hit-and-run driver kills his 10-year-old son. Dwight (Mark Ruffalo) begins to unravel because he’s the culprit who drove too fast on a dark road with his own sleeping son in the car. The men live in a pretty Connecticut town the size of Mayberry, or so we assume, as they run into each other more frequently than most next door neighbors do.

It’s natural, then, that when Ethan and his wife (Jennifer Connelly) decide to hire a lawyer to help them get justice should the driver ever be found, they turn to Dwight’s law firm, and that Dwight should have to handle the case and swallow his guilt like the rat he is.

If you can get past that conceit — and it’s a big leap — Reservation Road rewards with a couple of fine performances from Ruffalo and Phoenix, two actors who have a tough time being uninteresting. Phoenix in particular is remarkable; his weird, twitchy style may seem unsuited to suburban melodrama and more in tune with the larger-than-life personalities he so often portrays. But Ethan’s slow, controlled burn is fiery and riveting even in the film’s quiet moments.

Also good is Connelly, reduced to an observer but leaving a lasting impression of pain and determination to carry on, if only for her daughter’s sake. Despite its contrivances, Reservation Road is moving at times, and that’s largely due to the skill of its cast.

Reservation Road was adapted from John Burnham Schwartz’s novel by Schwartz and director Terry George (Hotel Rwanda), and many of its questionable developments lie squarely in the novel. But action on screen has a way of making what we gloss over in writing seem tremendously foolish, and so the film is ultimately undone by a series of laughable events (Dwight’s near-confession to a cop who thinks he’s dropped by the station to discuss the case is only one of them). Instead of a tense, emotional and psychological thriller or a thoughtful exploration of grief and guilt, what we end up with is … soap. Whether you choose to wash your hands of it is up to you.

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Connelly, Mira Sorvino.

Director: Terry George.

Screenwriters: John Burnham Schwartz, Terry George. Based on Burnham’s novel.

Producers: A. Kitman Ho, Nick Wechsler.

A Focus Features release. Running time: 102 minutes. Language, some disturbing images. Playing at area theaters.

This story was originally published October 26, 2007 at 7:10 AM.