Reign Over Me

By John Anderson, Newsday, Zap2It.com | March 23, 2007

Don Cheadle and Adam Sandler in 'Reign Over Me'

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If Mike Binder isn't careful, he's going to get pegged as the St. Jude of Hollywood, the patron saint of impossible causes -- or, at least, impossible actors. In last year's "Man About Town," he tackled the task of directing Ben Affleck. In "The Upside of Anger" (2005), he got the best performance in years out of Kevin Costner. Having worked his way up to Everest, Binder now presents Adam Sandler as a man who acts very much like Adam Sandler, but only because he lost his family on 9/11.

The first thing one must do, should one decide to watch this movie, is to forget its connection to September 2001. Although the occasion of the terrorist attacks provides Binder with a way to explain how a man could plausibly lose his wife and three daughters all in one morning, it doesn't quite explain his grief -- a grief so profound that it not only renders him ready for an institution, it dwarfs the grief of anyone else anywhere who lost people on that dark day. If you agree, as Binder obviously does, that such mourning is material for a warm-hearted dramedy, the 9/11 link is really irrelevant.

"Reign Over Me," with its tortured title and a soundtrack apparently devoted to resuscitating the career of Jackson Browne, is really a buddy picture, out of the "Midnight Cowboy"/"Rain Man"/"Of Mice and Men" variety. One half of the team is responsible for the other half, the dominant character becoming the personification of self-sacrifice while actually receiving far more than he gives -- because, God knows, a friend this close to certifiable madness has to be a font of wisdom and enlightenment. The man in need of a lesson here is Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle), a dentist who doesn't know how good he has it, until he meets Charlie Fineman (Sandler) and realizes that a solid marriage and attractive children are a lot better than root canal.

Sandler gives a wandering, wavering performance, in some moments glib and witty, in others violent or near-catatonic. This is the fault, in part, of Binder's script, which is always willing to throw character development under the bus when there's an easy laugh waiting on the sidewalk. But Sandler is like a car with a faulty transmission, the gears shifting too abruptly; Charlie's anger is too intense, his silence too sullen, to be coming from one believable character. Which may be why screenwriters are so fond of writing people who can be explained away as mentally challenged.

Binder does get a few good laughs out of the Charlie-Alan relationship, which is a little sitcom all its own -- Alan is uptight enough to squirm at Charlie's antics, but too charitable to let him go. Cheadle, of course, is all one might expect; Saffron Burrows, too, is terrific as Alan's crazy patient, who might be a perfect match for Charlie. And Sandler tries to please his existing fan base while also stretching himself to new and unexplored lengths. If you hear something snap, please inform the theater management.