|
MOONLIGHT MILE Send This Review to a Friend
A good cast with acting to match cannot inject sufficient life into this morose story about attempts to come to grips with grief. The effort here is much more subdued than in the plot-driven "In the Bedroom," which also dealt with grief. But "Moonlight Mile" has too many situations that are not all that believable. The characters don't always act as one suspects they might under such circumstances.
In the screenplay by director Brad Siberling ("City of Angels") a terrible tragedy has just struck the Floss family in 1970s New England. Ben (Dustin Hoffman) and JoJo (Susan Sarandon) have lost their daughter, and the film begins with her funeral. She was the random victim of a shooting by happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's a thoroughly senseless death. Given the expertise of Hoffman and Sarandon, we can be sure that their grieving performances will have touches of originality.
The basic problem lies in the character of Joe (Jake Gyllenhaal), who was supposed to marry the daughter, and now eases into being part of the Floss household almost by default. Ben wants to take him in as a partner in his real-estate business and Joe drifts into it. By now the spacey looks of Gyllenhaal and his lost-in-the-clouds acting demeanor is beginning to grate, and one is hard-pressed to believe his passivity here, particularly since we learn that he and the daughter were about to call things off.
When he meets Bertie, who works in a post office and has her own problems, he is drawn to her as she is to him. Ellen Pompeo strains so hard to seem natural in the role hat the result is mannered instead, especially since she is saddled with forced, not very believable dialogue. Bertie and Joe are lost souls who must find each other, and Bertie has to shed her emotional ties to her missing Vietnam soldier.
Holly Hunter is a prosecutor who needs the family help in going after the killer. Hunter's performance is crisp, but there's a courtroom scene that is totally absurd as Joe rambles on about his feelings and personal situation in a speech that any defense attorney would have objected to as irrelevant, if a judge didn't interrupt first.
"Moonlight Mile," inspired by writer-director Siberling's personal loss when his girlfriend actress Rebecca Schaeffer was murdered by a stalker in 1989, drips with the sincerity that comes from enduring such a tragedy and gains from actors giving of their talent, but it lacks the overall ring of truth needed to grip us as such a tale must to be more than maudlin. A Touchstone Pictures release.
|