Universal

It’s always a danger when you have the same person do too many roles in a film. There have been notable exceptions, but the rule proves true enough to be considered an axiom. In this case we have the duet of Hunter Hill and Perry Moore co-directing and co-writing the script. The problem is that neither of them had done either of those things before. Their inexperience takes its toll on a film that had a lot of potential. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a project is to let it go. Unfortunately these two couldn’t give up even a little of that control. In the end you have a movie with a very powerful cast that can’t seem to salvage anything given them by Hill and Moore.

Billy (Garity) is pretty much a loser. We first find him at the hands of a merciless drug dealer, Red (Matthews). It appears that Billy’s girl, Hope (de Matteo) has stolen a rather large shipment of drugs and run. Red assumes Billy must be in on the theft, so now he’s going to kill him if he can’t turn over the drugs or the money they’re worth. Of course, Billy can’t do either, so his only recourse is to escape and find Hope. He does escape in a manner far too clever for this character to have come up with. He grabs Hope’s young son (Ford) and heads to his old hometown. In Lake City, his mother, Maggie (Spacek) is struggling trying to hang on to her home. There’s a development company that wants the land. She’s a bit shocked when Billy and Clayton, the boy, show up at her house. We’re made to understand that a tragedy involving a younger brother has caused a lifelong tension between the two. Billy’s not here for his mother. He’s trying to track down Hope. Unfortunately, Red and his boys show up first, giving Billy a limited time to make the situation good. Billy is also working on staying sober. He meets up with a woman who we are led to believe might have been a childhood crush. Jennifer (Romijn) is now a cop in the small town. Complications arise as Billy tries to deal with the drug situation and his various emotions elicited by his being home again.

When the Learners are driving home from their son Josh’s recital, they stop off at a gas station where he is struck and killed by Dwight Arno (Mark Ruffalo) who is heading home from a Boston Red Sox game with his son Lucas. Dwight flees the scene while Ethan (Joaquin Phoenix) and Grace (Jennifer Connelly) mourn the death of their son. In the following weeks, Ethan becomes obsessed with finding the hit and run driver while Dwight deals with his guilt and tries to bond with his son against the backdrop of the 2004 Boston Red Sox historic World Series run.

Reservation Road had a lot going for it on paper. Phoenix, Connelly, and Ruffalo are all talented actors and Terry George (Hotel Rawanda) is an acclaimed up-and-coming director. However, Reservation Road fails to hit the emotional high notes that come with the territory. None of the actors are given much to do with the material, and the film’s pace is drearily slow. Connelly and Mira Sorvino are severely underused while Phoenix and Ruffalo don’t explore the depths of their characters. Everything is paint by numbers and the end result is a film that never lives up to its potential.