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 In
Moonlight Mile, Jake Gyllenhaal (pictured, left) has a furtive
tenderness and the sad eyes of a spaniel. Playing the fiancé of
a recently murdered girl, he's too waywardly original a performer
to milk us for obvious sympathy. Most of the new young-adult male
actors are interchangeable, but Gyllenhaal is one of a kind: Every
emotion he shows us is newly minted, every line reading has its
own private tempo. He never comes across with a single, quantifiable
attitude. Instead, he allows the crazy-making confusions of a character
to take over, and this makes him just about the most realistic and
comical and disturbing portrayer of youthful angst around. In The
Good Girl, his character called himself Holden. It's a great
loss that J. D. Salinger has never allowed The Catcher in the
Rye to be filmed: Gyllenhaal would have made a dream Holden
Caulfield.
He's easily the best thing in Moonlight Mile. Ben Floss
(Dustin Hoffman) and his wife, JoJo (Susan Sarandon), play the parents
of the murdered girl, who was caught in the line of fire when an
enraged husband shot at his wife in an ice-cream parlor in their
cozy New England town. Joe Nast (Gyllenhaal) is living with the
parents while awaiting the murder trial and trying to figure out
what to do with his life. Ben has plans for them to become partners
in his languishing commercial-real-estate business, and he and JoJo
like having the boy around. Joe genuinely likes the Flosses and
thinks, Why not give them what they need?
Moonlight Mile presents a very different take on murder
and family grief than, say, In the Bedroom, which understood
excruciatingly well how people can be made ragged by sorrow. Written
and directed by Brad Silberling and set in 1973, Moonlight Mile
is a much glossier and more sentimental achievement; it's about
how withstanding sorrow ultimately makes you a better person. The
wild card in this material is that, as we discover, Joe had broken
off with the daughter, whom he loved most as a friend, a few days
before she was killed. He soon falls in love with a local girl,
Bertie (Ellen Pompeo, who has a crumpled, Renée Zellweger–ish charm),
a postal worker by day who at night tends bar in a joint owned by
her boyfriend, who's been MIA in Vietnam for three years. Joe and
Bertie, damaged romantics, are made for each other. As you might
expect, the jukebox in the bar underscores their reawakening.
Hoffman has appeared in his share of corn over the years, but something
in him balks at all the husking he's required to do here. He's playing
a soap-operatic cross between a grumpy papa in deep denial over
his daughter's death and Willy Loman (whom he once played on Broadway).
Silberberg's engineered pathos undercuts Hoffman's sharpest instincts.
He's too wily and subversive (and crotchety) an actor to bring off
a scene like the bonding ritual here, in which Joe and Ben cough
on their big cigars and talk of loss and togetherness.
Sarandon shows some fire in her early scenes as she blithely tosses
the grief-counseling books she has received from well-wishers into
the fireplace and damns equally the friends who ask about her feelings
and those who don't. But JoJo finds out about Joe's broken engagement
and his new love, and the truth sets her free. Silberling belabors
the obvious for us -- JoJo and Joe have practically the same name.
I guess that makes them soul mates. Actually, Silberling belabors
just about everything. He wants us to know, over and over again,
that family is where you find it, and so is love. It's no wonder
he's so fond of jukeboxes, but he forgot to change the record. (1
hr. 43 mins.; PG-13) — PETER RAINER
Opens September 27
• Showtimes
& tickets (movietickets.com)
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