La esperanza vive en mí

Greetings again from the darkness. How rare it is for a film to examine the lost soul of men in pain. Adam Sandler stars as Charlie, a man who lost his family in the 9/11 tragedy, and has since lost his career, his reason to live and arguably, his sanity. Don Cheadle co-stars as Sandler's former Dental School roommate who appears to have the perfect life (that Sandler apparently had prior to 9/11).

Of course the parallels in these men's lives are obvious, but it is actually refreshing to see men's feelings on display in a movie ... feelings other than lust and revenge, that is. Watching how they actually help each other by just being there is painful and heartfelt. Writer/Director Mike Binder ("The Upside of Anger", and Sandler's accountant in this film) really brings a different look and feel to the film. Some of the scenes don't work as well as others, but overall it is well written and solidly directed.

Sandler and Cheadle are both excellent. Sandler's character reminds a bit of his fine performance in "Punch Drunk Love", but here he brings much more depth. Cheadle is always fine and does a nice job of expressing the burden he carries ... just by watching him work a jigsaw puzzle.

Support work is excellent by Jada Pinkett Smith (as Cheadle's wife), Liv Tyler (as a very patient psychiatrist), Saffron Burrows (in an oddly appealing role), Donald Sutherland as an irritated judge and Melinda Dillon and Robert Klein as Sandler's in-laws.

The film really touches on how the tragic events of that day affected one man so deeply that he is basically ruined. In addition to the interesting story and some great shots of NYC, you have to love any film that features vocals from Chrissy Hynde, Bruce Springsteen and Roger Daltrey ... as well as Eddie Vedder impersonating Daltrey. Not exactly a chipper upbeat film, but it is a quality film with an unusual story.

Reign Over Me (2007)

This might be the best movie to deal with the 9/11 attacks out there. At first that isn't clear, but once you are done you realize that's all that matters. Out of nowhere, a tragedy and its personal consequences.

Of course, this is also a movie about a very unselfish friendship. Don Cheadle leads this movie top to bottom (this is the Adam Sandler movie that is really a Don Cheadle movie). And his unshakeable kindness and patience with ex-roommate Sandler is beautifully rendered. Cheadle's acting has a whole range of subtle gestures and hesitations that are clearly his, beyond what any director might offer. As the successful dentist in his late model Volvo wagon, he represents what Sandler, the man suffering from loss and psychological instability, once had.

Sandler is sort of perfect as a choice in this role partly because he's cast against type and that's the dynamic of the movie--a man who should be very different from what you see. The whole time you can picture the lively loving Sandler, and not the wreck before you. He plays the part with the quirks and inwardness you might expect, and it's not quite brilliant. He ends up supporting the shine of Cheadle's lead.

Another aspect to the movie, probably not unintended, is the beauty of New York, and the romantic lure of its ordinary streets. There are no landmarks here, just regular life in regular Manhattan.

The one slight drag on the whole affair, and I'm not sure how this could have been avoided without a wholly different plot, is the attempts to bring Sandler out of his hole. One aspect is professional psychiatry, which makes sense, and is pretty well done. (I found the depiction of an accomplished shrink by Liv Tyler really good.) But the other aspect, meant I suppose to add some spice to the cast, is the nutty and sharply beautiful presence of an outlier character, a woman who just happens along first into Cheadle's world and then by extension (and some unbelievable coincidence) into Sandler's. Saffron Burrows plays the part well but it seems forced into the scene--at times funny and poignant but, as with several other minor characters like the in-laws, mostly caricatured or out of place.

Not that anything is ever quite out of place in fiction. Fiction with a strong strain of truth giving it its depth. Director and writer Mike Binder has managed to pull together a gem that refers, ever so gently, to 9/11, and to some deeply caring New Yorkers who all, as a larger group, all suffered from the attacks. "Reign over Me" did not get the attention you might have expected. It's possibly because it's such a depressing movie, whatever its upbeat moments. But it's beautifully sad, like maybe we imagine some of the best European films to be, and I really recommend it on those terms.

Reign Over Me is a success due to the powerful work by Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle. While comedic actors going dramatic has been seen as somewhat of a distraction, Sandler is no stranger to playing more serious roles. Most of the characters he portrays have an unstable temperament and a vulnerability that can burst at any moment. He might even be typecast for characters with such hidden anger problems. However, this performance has some considerable dramatic weight, unlike his roles in less comedic fare like Punch-Drunk Love and Spanglish.

In the film, Alan Johnson (Cheadle) runs into his old college roommate, Charlie Finerman (Sandler), whom he hasn't seen in several years. Five years before, Charlie suffered the overwhelming loss of his wife and three daughters in a plane crash. Charlie barely even recognizes Cheadle's character due to the repression of his memories and consequent reclusive childish lifestyle since the accident. It isn't until Alan persists in engaging him in conversation that Charlie remembers who he is. Their renewed relationship that follows will allow Finerman to have a friend who doesn't speak about his loss, eventually enabling him to confront the thoughts and feelings he has suppressed on his own terms.

Though writer-director Mike Binder doesn't show much sense of an individual style and some of his shots and transitions are a bit awkward, he does have a knack of getting decent to great performances from his actors while being a talented and funny writer. He shot this film with a digital camera, as more and more filmmakers are doing today, enabling the crew to shoot the night scenes with limited lighting. This kept the colorful backgrounds of New York City in focus, but resulted in creating frequent digital grain, which resembles blue specks scattered and moving on the screen.

Almost every main character in Reign Over Me gives a great performance. Jada-Pinkett Smith and especially Liv Tyler are memorable in their respective roles as a frustrated wife to Cheadle's character and a psychiatrist. However, it is Sandler and Cheadle that give some of their finest work to date. They completely owned this movie. Sandler actually plays a character that doesn't outwardly resemble or act like himself at all, partially credited to his Bob Dylan-esquire wig. Though Cheadle's character has more screen time than Sandler, they both should be considered to be leading roles, as they equally support and help each other throughout the film.

Music also plays a great part in this film, especially the title song "Reign Over Me," or "Love, Reign O'er Me" by The Who, and later covered by Pearl Jam. In one of the most powerful moments of the film, Binder shows Sandler using music to shut out his feelings and memories, but this particular song provokes such intense emotion that rather than diminishing his anger, it incites his emotions. All an all, Reign Over Me is an enjoyable, sad, yet many times funny film, driven by its amazing leading performances.

Love hurts. That, I think, is the main message Mike Binder's newest film Reign Over Me brings across. Whether that love has caused your relationship to become stagnant, or has brought anger from the one you love cheating for years, or has broken your heart to the point of being unable to open yourself up to the world, love hurts. The great thing about this film, however, is not in its portrayal of these lost souls trying to let their past heartbreaks go, but in the eventual restart of new bonds for the future. No one in this drama is perfect; they are all at some degree trapped emotionally in relationships that they can't free themselves from alone. There is some heavy subject material here and I credit Binder for never making the story turn into a political diatribe, but instead infusing the serious moments with some real nice comedic bits allowing the tale to stay character-based and small in scale compared to the epic event that looms overhead. What could have become a trite vehicle for opinions on how 9-11 effected us all, ends up being a story about two men and a connection they share that is the only thing which can save their lives from a life of depression and regret.

This is a new career performance for Adam Sandler. I like to think that my favorite director Paul Thomas Anderson was the first to see the childish, pent-up anger in his stupid comedies as something to use dramatically. The juvenility of a character like Billy Madison allows for laughs and potty humor, but also can be used to show a repressed man, shy and shutout to the world around him—a man with no confidence that needs an event of compassion to break him from his shell. Anderson let Sandler do just that in his masterpiece Punch-Drunk Love and Mike Binder has taken it one step further. Sandler plays former dentist Charlie Fineman whose wife and three kids were killed in one of the planes that took down the World Trade Center on 9-11. That one moment crushed any life that he had and as a result, he became reclusive and started to believe he couldn't remember anything that happened before that day. He really delivers a moving portrait of a man trying to keep up the charade in his head while those around him, those that love him, try and open him up to the reality of what happened and what the future holds. Always on edge and ready to snap at any moment when something is mentioned to spark the memory of his perished family, he goes through life with his iPod and headphones, shutting out everything so as not to be tempted remember.

Reign Over Me is not about Charlie Fineman though, it is about dentist and family man Alan Johnson. A man that has trapped himself into a marriage and dental practice that both have stagnated into monotony, Johnson needs as much help in his life as his old college roommate Charlie does. Played perfectly by the always brilliant Don Cheadle, Johnson has lost his backbone to try and change his life. He has no friends and when he sees Charlie, by chance, one day, his life evolves into something he hasn't felt in 15 years. He revels in the chance to go out with an old friend no matter how much he has changed from the death of his family. Cheadle's character wants to revert back to the college days of hanging out and Sandler's doesn't mind because all that was before he met his wife. The two men get what they want and allow themselves to grow close despite the years of solitude that used to rule their lives. Once they begin opening up though, it is inevitable that the subject of the tragedy will creep up and test the façade they have created for themselves.

The supporting cast does an amazing job helping keep up appearances for the two leads. Jada Pinkett Smith has never been an actress that impressed me and throughout the film played the tough as nails wife nicely, but it is her final scene on the phone with Cheadle that really showed me something different and true. Liv Tyler is a bit out of her element as a psychiatrist, but the movie calls her on this fact and makes the miscasting, perfect casting. The many small cameos are also effective, even writer/director Mike Binder's role as Sandler's old best friend and accountant, (my only gripe here is why he feels the need to put his name in the opening credits as an actor when it is everywhere, considering it is his film). Last but not least is the beautiful Saffron Burrows. She is a great actress and plays the love- crushed divorcée trying to put her life back together wonderfully. A role that seems comic relief at first, but ends up being an integral aspect for what is to come.

Binder has crafted one of the best dramatic character studies I have seen in a long time. The direction is almost flawless, (the blurring between cuts and characters in the fore/ background really annoyed me in the beginning), the acting superb, and the story true to itself, never taking the easy way out or wrapping itself up with a neatly tied bow at the conclusion. Even the music was fantastic and used to enhance, not to lead us emotionally, (why after two great uses of the titular song by The Who did Binder feel the need to use the inferior Eddie Veddar remake for the end, I don't know, but it did unfortunately stick out for me). Reign Over Me is a film about love and how although it can cause the worst pain imaginable, it can also save us from regret and allow us to once again see the world as a place of beauty and hope.

The feel of this movie was amazing. Adam Sandler's performance was very inspiring. As he played a very rattled and fragile character, he took his ability to the very edge and really worked the role. His character was really interesting. I can see myself reading the script for this movie and not being half as interested in the part as Sandler made me. For someone who plays primarily comedy roles, he pulled off a serious role with what seemed to be his own quirks and input. I especially loved the scene in which Adam and Don's characters rode the motorized scooter around the city. I familiarized with the moment, because it seemed like Don was witnessing one thing Adam does to get away from it all. With his video games, music, and many other things he does to keep him from thinking about the past, riding his scooter with his headphones on seemed like an escape from his thoughts. This movie is definitely worth the watch.