Reign Over Me
In “Reign Over Me,” writer-director Mike Binder contrasts the low-key, familiar domestic turmoil of a dentist undergoing a midlife crisis with the unspeakable anguish of a man whose wife and three daughters died on 9/11. Don Cheadle, who plays the dentist, Alan Johnson, communicates everyday flashpoints of stress with exciting alacrity. We feel we know him, and we’re eager to laugh with him. And Binder is clearly more comfortable in Alan’s world. But who could blame him? The brave thing about “Reign Over Me” is that it goes where nobody is comfortable, to an abyss of suffering that’s knowable only to an unlucky few. Charlie Fineman, played by Adam Sandler, at first feels like a construct, the grieving widower as puppy-dog urban boho. Five years after their deaths, he refuses to acknowledge that his wife and children ever existed. He tools around Greenwich Village on a scooter, fueled by classic rock, video games, Chinese food and Mel Brooks movies. Yet Charlie gets a chance to unveil his heartbreak because Alan accepts his idiosyncracies. After all, the movie asks, who’s to say how Charlie – or anyone – should mourn? Sandler’s performance, while short of great, becomes less affected once Charlie drops his defenses. Binder, meanwhile, locates the nobility and fallibility in Charlie, Alan and everyone in their orbit. “Reign Over Me” is a remarkable movie that traffics in naked emotion but never succumbs to bathos, because it accepts and celebrates life’s endless messiness.
LISTEN: Reign Over Me