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What’s the Story?

Reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs

When Alan (Don Cheadle) discovers Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler) shuffling on a New York sidewalk, it's obvious that his onetime college roommate needs help. But even though Charlie is suffering dislocation and depression after losing his wife and daughters in a plane on 9/11, he's not the only character in REIGN OVER ME who could use a sense of purpose and connection.

Is It Any Good?

3

A meditation on loss, Mike Binder's film lines up a whole series of victims. As hard as Reign Over Me works to complicate Charlie's grief and rage (he's alternately twitchy and aggressive, frightening and pathetic), it offers a troubling, reductive contrast in one of Alan's patients, Donna (Saffron Burrows). Her "female" response to her own traumatic loss isn't edifying or sympathetic. Instead, Donna is driven into hypersexual stalker-spasms (she repeatedly offers Alan oral sex in his office). Her aggressiveness scares Alan and intrigues Charlie, who is mostly lost in an adolescent fixation on her breasts -- at least until she becomes his means to redemption.

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