Crossing Guard

A powerful and compelling story, filmed well and with some great performances.

Sean Penn seems to have managed to level the actors here, with David Morse, Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson putting in great performances and none of them stealing the scenes from the other. I found this very surprising as I expected Nicholson to flood the screen, as he so often does with such little difficulty.

However, the emotion between Huston and Nicholson in the latter half of the film during the coffee shop scene is so powerful to watch. Huston is such a wonderful actress, and Nicholson shows some emotional depth that I haven't seen before, or rather, not felt with his performance before.

The story is written and planned extremely well, with tension rising slowly and almost imperceptibly, until the final day. I found myself caught from the opening scenes of the counselling session cut with the drunken, partying Nicholson, right through to the pivotal moments of the main characters lives.

It is a fantastic way to address this subject. To examine it from both sides, and keep each side with its own sympathies and understandings. Cleverly your sympathies and hatred are swapped throughout the story.

I hope there's more to come like this.

David Morse was excellent in the movie. Whenever he's on screen, the movie is worth watching. Jack Nicholson is his usual competent crazy guy. The subject makes the movie a Serious Topic movie, but it often has trouble staying on topic.

The movie itself is mostly very slow going, aside from Morse's scenes and the scene where Nicholson talks to his ex-wife about a dream. How many times do we need to see Nicholson's character hanging out at the strip club? Yes, we get the idea, he's turned into a sleazebag with no direction in his life.

The ending is what really saves the movie. Beyond that, no spoilers from me. Once you get the idea of how Nicholson acts in the strip club, you might as well fast-forward through the strip club scenes (unless you want to see the strippers do their thing), because they're all pretty much the same. Still, that ending is just so good the movie ends up feeling pretty decent.

I don`t think much of Sean Penn as an actor , his OTT performance in CASUALTIES OF WAR almost ruined the entire film for me and it wasn`t only that film that Penn yanked my chain , but despite this I can`t help noticing that he does have some talent behind the camera . He`s not flawless of course and his flaws are plain to see in his later film THE PLEDGE but I found THE CROSSING GUARD to be both very moody and very moving with some truly great acting on display . It does suffer from one deep flaw - Penn`s script

The problem is how the two protagonists are written . Freddy Gales daughter is killed by drunk driver John Booth so guess which character THE CROSSING GUARD portrays in a sympathetic light ? That`s right , the one who killed the girl ! I won`t go as far to say that Penn has painted Booth as the real victim , but why on earth does he paint Freddy as being such a harsh character ? He`s vulgar , always in a drunken state and when it comes to women his attitude is disgusting , in fact he`s a dirty old man and there`s nothing to prove it`s caused by the reaction to the death of his daughter . He is the opposite of Booth who is shown as a different character whose spell in prison has changed him into a profound man able to contribute to society . I see so the man bereaved by the criminal is actually the bad guy ? I`m not sure if this is what Penn is saying because the message is somewhat confused .

But despite this serious flaw I`d like to see more films directed by Sean Penn , just as long as the producer keeps him away from a word processor

This film should have been good. It has a potentially great plot, and the first few scenes are very good. Then, it simply falls apart, and the main plot is basically ignored for much of the remainder of the movie. I also found the ending to be somewhat disappointing, although it was nice to see the focus back on the central storyline. The acting was certainly good, as you would expect in a Jack Nicholson movie, but the real tragedy is that David Morse was absolutely wasted. He was outstanding, but he rarely had anything to work with. What a disappointment.

Sean Penn directs Jack Nicholson in this story of a man who swears to avenge his daughter's death by killing the drunk driver who struck her.

The movie opens up with Nicholson's character being a sleazy guy in a strip club and instantly we don't care very much about him, because he treats everyone like crap and doesn't really seem to have much depth. I'm all for unlikeable characters, but not when they're totally unredeemable and of no interest to the audience.

The rest of the plot seems very back-and-forth..."I'm going to kill him!" "Wait, I can't kill him." "I'm going to kill him!" "But I shouldn't kill him." When he finally makes up his mind the movie has already lost a lot of its momentum and derails way too early.