Early on in the quietly disturbing film "Reservation Road," two fathers' lives collide in one instance. From that moment on, their respective paths continue to cross at the most surprising of intersections.
The story is one told many times before: A family loses one of its members in an accident and must somehow figure out how to go on. Instead of continuing in the vein of so many films before it, "Reservation Road" includes surprising encounters between a man who has lost his son and the man who took him away.
Josh Learner (played by Sean Curley) is a precocious cellist, and his father Ethan (Joaquin Phoenix), mother Grace (Jennifer Connelly) and younger sister Emma (Elle Fanning) have all just witnessed his talent at a recital in their idyllic seaside Connecticut town. Ethan's pride emanates from the screen in the early scenes with his son; even skipping rocks along the water is made into an occasion to celebrate his affection for his 10-year-old child.
Dwight Arno (Mark Ruffalo) is a father figure on the other side of the spectrum. Crass and uncultured, the film first introduces him at a Red Sox game with his son, die-hard BoSox fan Lucas (Eddie Alderson).
These introductory scenes insinuate the dichotomous contrast between Dwight and Ethan. Dwight is a small-town lawyer, divorced from his wife Ruth (Mira Sorvino) and lacking any semblance of motivation. Conversely, Ethan works in the ivory towers of academia as a professor and is clearly infatuated with his family.
Navigating twisted back roads in the dead of night, Dwight drives toward Ruth's house after the game. Meanwhile, Ethan and his family stop for gas on their way home from Josh's cello recital. As Josh lets fireflies out of a jar alongside the road, Dwight swerves around a curve and, while trying to answer his cell phone, plows into Josh.
Director Terry George, known for his work on "Hotel Rwanda" (2004), masterfully shot this scene, shocking the audience while keeping gratuitous blood and gore to a minimum. Dwight slows down and almost comes to a standstill as Ethan runs over to his son's mangled body. As Ethan screams at Dwight's car, Dwight speeds away into the night.
This one encounter on Reservation Road drives the film to its emotional climax. Dwight's life is filled with fear as the police begin to make headway in the investigation to find Josh's killer. He abandons his car for a rental, afraid that the vehicle will tie him to the crime. Dwight's son Lucas eventually makes the connection between the night the two drove home from a Red Sox game and the night of Josh's death. Dwight tenses up and denies the link.
Ethan's obsession with finding Josh's killer leads him on a sordid trail of avenging the crime himself. He begins to frequent Internet chat rooms while the case languishes in the town's police department. There he makes an unnamed friend in another parent of a murdered child who convinces him to seek his own justice outside of the court system.
Connelly is terrifically convincing as a troubled housewife, blaming herself for her son's death and her husband's fixation. In a particularly moving scene, Ethan arrives home to see men taking Josh's personal possessions from the family's home. He bounds up the stairs where his wife awaits and the two throw emotional bombs at each other as they argue over what to do with their dead son's possessions.
The film's subtle yet effective navigation of the labyrinth of plot twists is its greatest strength. While Sorvino is underused in her role as Dwight's ex-wife, the script offers both Ruffalo and Phoenix opportunities to shine as the film's leading men.
George deftly encompasses the stories of both families equally through a series of quick cuts contrasting the two patriarchs. These juxtapositions serve the film's core of variations on the theme of personal justice, but at movie's end, the question remains: Is "an eye for an eye" ever really justified?
