Reservation Road, Review
Reservation Road
2007, ****, Drama
Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Connelly, and Mira Sorvino star in this drama about a fatal hit and run accident. Phoenix and Connelly portray husband and wife and Ruffalo is Sorvino's ex-husband. The two sets of parents are connected in more ways than they care to know. After an evening of the Red Sox game, Ruffalo and his son are on their way home, speeding along Reservation Road, through a woods filled area, the inevitable happens when one is speeding in a rush; Ruffalo hits someone, and brushes is off to his son, and tells him he "hit a log."
After 10 years, since "Inventing the Abbotts," Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly join together once again on screen. This time it will be for a drama that will leave you feeling distraught as well as feeling some forgiveness for those in the story that have committed a crime.
Ethan Learner (Phoenix, "Walk the Line," "We Own the Night") and his wife Grace (Connelly, "Dark Water," "Requiem of a Dream") are on their way a back home from their son's outdoor orchestra concert. Both children are in the back seat. They stop at a gas station. Their son goes off into the woods to let some fireflies go he collected. With in a minute or two he is struck by an SUV.
As you can imagine most parents would be extremely distraught, need counseling, and grieve in their own way until the pain subsided a bit. But, in this flick Phoenix takes matters into his own hands, because he believes time is passing and the police have moved on. He is right. He begins to take photos of damaged SUV's in the area. He begins to suspect the one person helping him on the case (Ruffalo).
This film is an excellent drama. It is well acted by all involved in the project. It shows that two wrongs don't make a right. It shows how we all should forgive. And it shows that sooner or later the culprit will come around, and pay their time. Loosing a child is an extremely difficult thing.