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'Moonlight Mile' doesn't go the distance
[Photo: Touchstone Pictures]
Jake Gyllenhaal, left, is a young man living with his girlfriend’s parents, Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon, after her death in Moonlight Mile. |
By PHILIP BOOTH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 3, 2002
The film about dealing with grief begins convincingly. But it develops a case of the warm fuzzies and detours to a Hollywood ending.
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When tragedy strikes, the survivors' grief is always messy and never easily tidied.
The staying power of grief was recognized last year with rare honesty in the Oscar-nominated In the Bedroom and in The Son's Room, an Italian import.
Moonlight Mile, written and directed by Brad Silberling, the filmmaker responsible for 1998's treaclefest City of Angels, insists on having the Big Empty Feeling and a happy ending, too.
It won't be giving away too much to reveal that the movie's major characters are ready to let the healing begin by the time the final frame rolls around. The parents of the deceased have realized how to ease their pain, and the almost-spouse left behind has a new romance. Life is rarely like that.
Still, there's much to admire about Moonlight Mile, beginning with Jake Gyllenhaal's quiet, subtly shaded performance at the center of the film, noncoasting turns from Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon, and a smart evocation of small-town life in New England, circa the early 1970s. The story behind the movie is compelling, too: Silberling's script draws from his experiences dealing with the death of actor Rebecca Schaeffer (My Sister Sam), who was his girlfriend, in 1989.
The sleepy-eyed Gyllenhaal, a potential Next Big Thing because of his first-rate work in this year's The Good Girl and Lovely and Amazing, is Joe, a dazed-looking kid whose fiance has been killed in a shooting at a restaurant.
As the film opens, he is living at her parents' home. The girl's mother, JoJo (Sarandon), father, Ben (Hoffman), and Joe are preparing to attend the woman's funeral, handling arrangements and dealing with family and friends.
Ben, feeling guilty that he couldn't protect his daughter, stays busy attempting to meet everyone else's needs. JoJo (Sarandon, back where she belongs after the mediocrity of The Banger Sisters) simultaneously desires and rejects consolation from others.
A post-funeral gathering, which looks as awkward as such things can be, has Ben introducing Joe to the guests. One can't help but flash back to the party scene in The Graduate, when Hoffman was playing the troubled young man.
Moonlight Mile rolls on, mixing the central subject, the family's grief, with several subplots in a manner that borders on perfunctory. Dad, Mom and Joe wander around the house, trying to decide what to do next. "What is it?" asks JoJo, a writer facing a serious mental block. "It's like we're waiting for something to happen."
Meanwhile, there's a trial and a tough-talking district attorney (Holly Hunter), who has too much information about legal strategies and too many questions about the family's thoughts on the death penalty. Ben and Joe embark on a business partnership in commercial real estate, and they work to close a deal with a slick big-time developer (Dabney Coleman).
Silberling ultimately goes for the warm and fuzzy, so there's a romance thrown in, as Joe meets Bertie (rookie Ellen Pompeo, a chip off Renee Zellweger). And yes, boy loses girl, temporarily, when troubling secrets are confronted.
The soundtrack is amped with appealing period nuggets, including the Rolling Stones' Moonlight Mile, Sly Stone's I Want to Take You Higher, Van Morrison's Sweet Thing and tunes by Elton John, Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane and Jethro Tull.
Too bad the same care wasn't taken with the script and direction. The upshot: solid performances in a movie that leaves us wanting more than Silberling is apparently able to give. Call it a wasted opportunity.
Moonlight Mile
- Grade: B-
- Director: Brad Silberling
- Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon, Holly Hunter, Ellen Pompeo, Richard T. Jones, Allan Cordunor, Dabney Coleman
- Screenplay: Brad Silberling
- Rating: PG-13; profanity, sexual situations
- Running time: 112 min.
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