Reservation Road

Reservation Road

Directed by Terry George (R)

A hit-and-run accident links the lives of two emotionally disturbed fathers.

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Reservation Road is nothing but a dead end, said Scott Foundas in The Village Voice. After a hit-and-run accident kills a boy and shatters two Connecticut families, the film follows the intersecting lives of the affected fathers: Joaquin Phoenix’s Ethan, consumed by rage, seeks justice, while Mark Ruffalo’s Dwight, consumed by guilt, seeks redemption. Phoenix and Ruffalo both “specialize in conveying inarticulate conflict and buried anger,” said Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly. Smartly paired by director Terry George, “each actor’s dark, dense presence meets and challenges the other man’s interior restlessness.” Their solid performances make Reservation Road a very sad, unnerving melodrama that reveals how human beings cope after unbearable tragedy. But like the John Burnham Schwartz novel from which it was adapted, the film has too many narrative twists and turns. George presents the central tragedy in the first few minutes and lets it “hang over the characters like a black shroud,” said Todd McCarthy in Variety. As its contrived plot piles on the coincidences, Reservation Road turns into a “waiting game for the inevitable confrontation between the men.” No one should have to be so miserable for so long.