College roommates make for a peculiar kind of friendship. They can be the first friends in a life of fresh independence. Chances are you drift apart. Yet the time you met was so ripe with possibility that years, even decades later, those relationships still hold sway.
In “Reign Over Me,” Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle are Charlie Fineman and Alan Johnson, one-time roomies.
Married, Alan lives more than comfortably with Jeanene (Jada Pinkett Smith) and their daughters in a spacious apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Though his partners appear to be in denial, he’s the glue to their successful dental practice.
One afternoon Alan sees Charlie on the streets of the city where they have both settled. When he sees him next, their reunion doesn’t bode well.
Charlie’s memory is stuck on mute. The headphones he constantly wears over unruly hair blot out the world with Bruce Springsteen or Who tunes, like the rock-opera power ballad that inspired the movie’s title.
Writer-director Mike Binder made the wildly sardonic comedy “The Upside of Anger,” which he penned with Joan Allen in mind. That film, about a woman scorned and her four daughters, was in part the filmmaker’s response to 9/11. Anger trumps grief to the embittered end, when a startling twist provides a tart, unexpected moral.
As a central theme, grief is still elusive in “Reign Over Me,” a sentimental journey of solitude and friendship.
Sandler does a fine and smirkless job of handling the emotional baggage of Charlie, who lost his wife and three daughters in a plane crash – and not just any aviation disaster.
Charlie lives in the betwixt- and-between space before his family’s devastation. He listens to the music he did in college. His drum kit and guitars have a room of their own. At night, he rides a scooter through the streets of Manhattan, plays video games in the apartment he shared with his family, or remodels then demolishes his kitchen over and over.
A video-game reviewer wrote of “Shadow of the Colossus” – the game Charlie plays – that one of its best features is “its sense of solitude, one that overwhelms you with simultaneous feelings of calmness and despair.” Is it a wonder Charlie’s addicted?
Binder is an observant filmmaker with a deft feel for the exchanges that take place around the family table. Over dinner, Alan says, “I saw Charlie Fineman today.” Everyone goes somber. It’s one of the movie’s most subtle and believably intimate moments.
“Reign Over Me” gets its ethical footing from Cheadle’s performance. In turn, he gets a steady assist from Pinkett Smith. She exhibits love and clarity with lines like this one, delivered when Alan uses their daughter to escape a night of jigsaw puzzling: “You would have thought she got you out of traffic school,” she says wryly.
Alan knows he loves his wife. And he’s aware enough to realize whatever is ailing him won’t be resolved by infidelity. Even when an alluring if unhinged woman (Saffron Burrows) comes to his office to have a veneer fixed, he isn’t tempted. Good thing, because not being interested still lands him in a lawsuit.
And Alan’s self-knowledge doesn’t stop him from pestering psychiatrist Angela Oak- hurst (Liv Tyler) outside her office with questions that begin weakly, “I have this friend. …”
The film forces some of its connections (the seductive woman sticks around the movie), but “Reign Over Me” pulls off a sweet parity between its main characters. Charlie frees the buttoned-down Alan with his unfettered penchant for spontaneity. He reintroduces Alan to boyish “fun.”
Their fun is fragile. A visit to Alan’s office reminds Alan, and us, that Charlie suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Alan begins forcing Charlie back into the world of the living, the talking, the grieving.
Charlie’s in-laws, the Templemans (Robert Klein and Melinda Dillon), hunger for a contact that will keep their memories alive. Charlie’s refusal puts them on a collision course.
Donald Sutherland makes a searingly humane appearance as the judge who must decide if Charlie will be institutionalized.
The Templemans’ need reminds us how differently waves of sudden grief strike.
Sandler and Cheadle’s fine chemistry reminds us that friendship can be a balm, can bring joy, can – sometimes must – be an intervention.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com; try the Screen Team blog at denverpostbloghouse.com.
———————————
“Reign Over Me”
R for language and some sexual references.|2 hours, 5 minutes|DRAMA|Written and directed by Mike Binder; photography by Russ Alsobrook; starring Adam Sandler, Don Cheadle, Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler, Saffron Burrows, Donald Sutherland, Robert Klein, Melinda Dillon |Opens today at area theaters
