Mike Binder’s “Reign Over Me” is an important movie for reasons that have nothing to do with the sharply drawn characters, bittersweet if sometimes precious depiction of grief or powerful turns by Don Cheadle and Adam Sandler.
Rather, this tale of soundtrack-accented catharsis (named, loosely, after the Pete Townshend-penned song “Love, Reign O’er Me”) is important because it’s the first movie about 9/11 that’s not really about 9/11. Writer-director Binder (“The Upside of Anger”) uses the catastrophe as back story, like a prop, and this – to be sure – is progress.
Manhattan dentist Alan Johnson (Cheadle) is driving home from work when he sees his old college roommate, Charlie Fineman (Sandler), zip by on a motorized skateboard. This is not the ambitious, engaged Charlie that Alan remembers. This Charlie zigzags the streets of New York City on his scooter, lost in a state of numb wonder. This Charlie plays Xbox all night and compulsively rips apart his kitchen and redecorates it every week. This Charlie has an unruly mop of singer-songwriter hair. (If nothing else, “Reign Over Me” will provide Sandler with a first-rate resume tape if he ever auditions for a Bob Dylan biopic.)
What could send this formerly successful dentist over the edge? Well, something almost too horrible for words: Charlie’s wife and three daughters were on one of the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center. It’s a conversation stopper – so much so that Alan’s own daughter knows to stop needling Dad for a new cell phone when he mentions the encounter at the dinner table.
Part out of friendly concern, part to relieve himself from his smothering wife (Jada Pinkett Smith) and all-too-routine adult world, Alan is drawn to Charlie and his grief-triggered second adolescence. They jam in Charlie’s music studio, they go to Mel Brooks revival marathons, they joke about the crazy, sex-obsessed patient (Saffron Burrows) that’s suing Alan, but they don’t talk about Charlie’s family. At the slightest hint, Charlie’s massive rampart of denial starts to crumble, and he flies into a rage.
It makes for a plausible, consistently rewarding character study, albeit one robbed of some its raw emotional punch by Bender’s willingness to play the Screenwriter 101 game: a big courtroom scene, a potential love interest, the symbolic hand-off of scooter.
Which leaves the question: Is “Reign Over Me” exploitative? Does it use 9/11 to trigger a reflexive reaction of sympathy that will later be turned around to inspire humor and a warm, comforting sense of redemption? Sure, and why not? We’ve seen the “real” people of “United 93” and “World Trade Center” suffer the tragedy. It was only a matter of time before made-up people started suffering, too.
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