Reservation Road.

"Yes, Reservation Road is one of those movies where the characters suffer early and often," sighs Scott Foundas in the Voice. "Will Dwight's [Mark Ruffalo] guilty conscience speak up before Ethan [Joaquin Phoenix] figures things out and goes all Jodie Foster on him? While we await the answer with something less than breathless anticipation, the bathos piles up like autumn leaves."

"Reservation Road, the new film from Hotel Rwanda director Terry George, doesn't deal in the clashing of mighty armies or the conflict between nations; it looks at a smaller slice of the world. At the same time, the themes here - guilt, sorrow, anger, forgiveness - are explored with power and passion thanks to two extraordinary lead performances," writes James Rocchi at Cinematical. And an online listening tip: James interviews George.

Updated through 10/19.

"I made it through 25 minutes of this horribly directed melodrama, a botched version of novelist John Burnham Schwartz's decent literary thriller," grumbles the Boston Phoenix's Gerald Peary. "'I'm canceling my interview,' I called Focus Features on the phone. 'Is there a reason?' an annoyed PR flak queried. 'Not really,' I answered. This Focus Features rep wouldn't have been happy with my explanation: chatting in a hotel room with Jennifer Connelly wasn't enough payoff for sitting through the entire excruciating movie."

"Director Terry George should be mentioned as derisively as Paul Haggis by this point, having made a maddeningly innocuous film about the horrors of the Rwandan genocide and, now, one about the grueling pain of losing your child to a hit-and-run driver that exhibits all of the dramatic urgency of waiting for your number to be called at a supermarket deli," writes Jason Clark at Slant.

"Thanks mainly to the four actors; the opening sequence is unnerving and tense," writes Matt Mazur at PopMatters. "They seem to rise above the genre trappings. Unfortunately, the film loses steam after this well-crafted build-up."

"By the film's agonizing climax - a vice grip on the senses - the central players emerge distorted by inner pains that no quaint Connecticut backdrop could negate," writes Andrea Rosen in the L Magazine.

Updates, 10/18: At the Reeler, Vadim Rizov finds Reservation "overwrought and unabashedly allegorical, begging us to consider the implausible events on screen as a fresh and convincing examination of how revenge corrodes the soul. This movie corroded mine, at any rate."

"Reservation Road isn't a major achievement like The Brave One, but it's a significant attempt at showing contemporary moral confusion," writes Armond White in the New York Press.

"Would-be screenwriters are advised to catch Reservation Road on cable as it provides an object lesson of three awful script clichés that are to be avoided at all costs." Alonso Duralde counts them off at MSNBC.

"Reservation Road's physical and emotional clash might've given rise to an interesting examination of class - Dwight initially seems a salt-of-the-earth counterpoint to Ethan; but the former's profession, soon revealed as a pivotal plot point, is as white-collar as they come, and relegates the film to the conventional realm of the Hollywood revenge drama," writes Kristi Mitsuda at Reverse Shot.

Updates, 10/19: "Mr George has neither enough ice in his veins nor the filmmaking skill to pull off the wretched business of sacrificing a child for a fictional contrivance," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "He made me tear up while watching this movie, but he also made me grit my teeth."

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Robert Abele finds the Road to be "a misery windup so schematic and obvious it reduces its crisis-stricken characters to little more than emotional bumper cars."

"Reservation Road is stuffed fat with humanities-class essay themes: Grief, manhood, responsibility, revenge and hatred - discuss!" Stephanie Zacharek in Salon: "But even though the actors work hard to give the movie the illusion of depth and substance, the real meaning of those themes doesn't emerge in any significant way: They're flat colors dabbled onto the surface of the movie with a dark, dainty brush, not powerful, saturated hues that radiate from its core."

"If a film is going to place a dead child, and a grieving parent's subsequent revenge, at the center of its story, it had better (like the far stronger In the Bedroom) have all its other ducks in row: a great script, tight characterizations, believable suspense," writes Slate's Dana Stevens. "Otherwise it runs the risk of appealing to the lowest common denominator of audience identification: 'Can you even imagine living through something so awful?' Yes. Yes, I can. But you'd better not make me imagine it without a pretty damn good reason."

"It's a relentlessly downbeat, well-acted melodrama that's easy to admire, but intentionally impossible to enjoy," finds the AV Club's Nathan Rabin.

Posted by dwhudson at October 17, 2007 5:11 AM