Reine Sobre Mim

This film screened last night at Austin's Paramount theater as part of the SXSW Film Festival. We were graced with the presence of director Mike Binder and stars Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle who took audience questions after the film. It is a remarkable and powerful film about what it is like to lose yourself and begin to find your way back. The performances are phenomenal and the story manages to be both tragic and funny in a way that is all too rare. (The trailer for the film tries a little too hard to emphasize the comedic aspects.)

This is a breakout role for Adam Sandler. While he has begun to transition to more dramatic roles with Punch-Drunk Love and Spanglish, this role is a significant step forward for him as a dramatic actor. He deserves an Oscar nomination as he continues down to transition to more dramatic roles as Tom Hanks did and Jim Carrey is also doing. In this role, he seemed to be trying to channel Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Although playing an autistic man is certainly very different than Sandler's traumatized character, both characters for different reasons are trapped in their own worlds of child-like isolation and confusion.

Don Cheadle's performance is less surprising, but just as good. After Hotel Rwanda and Crash, we've come to expect remarkable nuanced performances from Cheadle. He has the qualities of sincerity and honesty that comes through in this role. But he, too, is also broken and struggling if not in the such profound ways as Sandler's character. Cheadle is struggling with difficulties in both his marriage and in his professional life as a dentist. Together the characters played by Cheadle and Sandler struggle to heal each other in the way that true friends often do (in a way that reminds me of Matt Damon and Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting). They are both searching for that part of the themselves that they have lost and trying to find again.

Reign over Me is one of the best major studio films to be released this year. The soundtrack, which is almost another character in the plot is wonderful. The filming in the streets of New York - a city that suffered a great tragedy and has also had to heal itself - is also quite beautiful. The supporting roles by Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler, Saffron Burrows (in a very odd role), Donald Sutherland, and Mike Binder himself are all quite good.

Writer/Director Mike Binder has really delivered a story that so many will be able to connect with on numerous levels. This is a story about grief, family, healing, male friendship, mental health, and the meaning of love. Reign over Me does not disappoint. The film is almost hypnotic as it draws you into the lives of its characters. Hollywood would have a much better reputation if it made more character-driven charming films like Reign over Me.

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.

I would never have expected much from a film starring Adam Sandler, Saffron Burrows, Liv Tyler and Jada Pinkett Smitn. Not that they're bad actors by any means. It's just that I have hardly found any movie that centred around their characters interesting at all. This is Sandler's first dramatic performance I've seen (mind you, I have not seen 'Punch Drunk Love' yet). The addition of Don Cheadle makes a difference where expectations were concerned but it is Sandler who springs a surprise with a very effective performance of a former dentist suffering from a severe form of post-traumatic stress disorder while coping, or more correctly, not coping with the loss of his family and living in a self-imposed isolation. His nuanced performance is a combination of restraint and subtle comedy. There are moments when he 'explodes' but it applies well to the context and Sandler stays within character. This is not to say that Cheadle was less impressive. The reason why he's less surprising is that one can almost always expect a good performance from this actor. What makes 'Reign Over Me' work most is Sandler and Cheadle's on screen camaraderie as they share the right chemistry. Cheadle's character too is suffering a difficult marriage and complications at work and his reunion with Sandler's Charlie provides a form of escape but at the same time helps him to deal with his own problems. This way both friends gradually find that pieces of themselves which they have long lost. Liv Tyler does well as Alon's (confidant) friend. Jada Pinkett Smith is quite adequate. Saffron Burrows is weird in an odd role but her sequences do provide comic relief. Melinda Dillon has a small but complex role and she shines. I liked the soundtrack very much. Not only are the tracks impressive, it also gives a voice to New York (a city which suffered the same tragedy as Charlie) and flows brilliantly with the film. Binder's direction is solid for the most part. However, the inclusion of a courtroom sequence (including the whole Donald Sutherland track) seems forced and makes 'Reign Over Me' slightly clichéd. Perhaps this integral sequence could have been done a little different, without involving a courtroom. Nonetheless, 'Reign Over Me' has heart and it does tackle several different concepts in a subtle and suitable way. The way the comedy was wonderfully layered into the screenplay is quite an achievement for Binder. Strongly recommended.

I just got back from a screening a couple of hours ago, and I was very happy with the movie when I left it. It's very intense, and the closest I've come to crying in a movie in quite some time. That is a credit to Adam Sandler, who delivers a magnificent performance on many levels, and who probably deserves an Oscar nom for it, were it not coming out so early in the year. Don Cheadle gives his usual superb performance playing the straight man to Adam's disturbed.

There is some humor, but most of it is really only funny in comparison to the tearjerking moments, as Adam deals with his loss and Don struggles to help him. Adam plays two levels very well... when he is mentally stable he is funny and likable, but when he is, well, less stable he's powerful and dark.

I recommend it for anyone who likes intense mental dramas about difficult friendship and loss.