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PREMIERE'S REVIEW (posted 10/18/07)

On a seemingly ordinary night, a random accident tears two separate families apart as they spiral into a pit of sorrow, depression, and moral uncertainty. Sounds intriguing, right? How about: On a seemingly ordinary night, a random accident tears two families apart as they spiral into a pit of inane coincidence, ludicrous decision-making, and melodrama. Somehow, not so intriguing anymore, is it? So unless Reservation Road decides to be uncharacteristically frank in its marketing, you'll be sold the former but given the latter.

Reservation Road begins by introducing us to Family #1: Phoenix and Connelly and their daughter Fanning, and we watch them watch their son at a musical recital. Everything about them so screams "blissfully happy" that you know they are doomed. Then we see part of Family #2: Divorced dad Ruffalo using his visitation time to take his son to a Red Sox game. The Phoenix/Connelly clan stop for gas on their way home, at a station located along the route Ruffalo is speeding down because the extra innings at Fenway have made him late for the scheduled child drop-off at his ex-wife's (Sorvino). Ruffalo's car accidentally strikes Phoenix and Connelly's son and, in a moment of panic, Ruffalo takes off. The stage is now set for an emotional meat grinder as Phoenix and Connelly deal with their son's death (as well as with the fact that everything happened so quickly in the dark that they are unable to recall enough details to help the cops in their investigation) and Ruffalo wrestles with his tortured moral compass. Sadly, this film becomes a clear instance of good actors failing to rise above the material they're given.

Phoenix can brood with the best of them, and Ruffalo has such a sad-sack, nice guy charm that he would, under better circumstances, be well equipped to pull off the notion of a generally good guy who made one very big mistake. Too bad the writing lets them both down — but not nearly as badly as it lets down Connelly. After a few early scenes where she gets to flex some muscles, she is so egregiously pushed to the background that her last few scenes could have been done by a stand-in.

Reservation Road is one of those infuriating films that can't allow this already dramatic situation to fester and develop on its own — rather, it has to force the drama by committing two key movie atrocities: The first is that they hinge every event on the most preposterous set of coincidences imaginable. Get this: not only does Ruffalo live in the same town as Phoenix and Connelly, but his ex-wife also just happens to be their daughter's piano teacher. Not enough? Phoenix, in an effort to light a fire under the police department (whom he feels is putting his case on the back burner), hires a lawyer. Who does that lawyer turn out to be? RUFFALO. At this point, if Ruffalo's son had turned out to be the long lost twin of Phoenix's son, I wouldn't have been surprised. I just would have questioned the wisdom of adapting a One Life to Live episode into a movie.

The second sin, of course, is Reservation Road's insistence on making its characters behave in ways that no human being would act. We're suppose to believe that Ruffalo panicked and acted without thinking, right? So why, barely a day after the accident, does he give his incriminating SUV away and grab himself a less attention-getting rental car? That's not the behavior of a confused innocent — that is now the behavior of a man in full cover-up mode. And do I even need to spoil things but revealing that, once Phoenix puts the two ginormous 2 and 2's together, he doesn't go to the cops but rather buys a gun in order to track down Ruffalo himself? Actually, I will spoil that, because it produces not only the most awful kidnapping scene I've ever seen, but concludes with a gunpoint confessional cry-off between Phoenix and Ruffalo that pushes "melodrama" into unfathomable new realms. Maybe Connelly volunteered to step into the background, if only as a futile effort to get as far away from Reservation Road as possible.

— Eric Alt