Adam Sandler has a long and rather perplexing history in cinema, beginning his career as little more than an obnoxious prat who did not mind looking like he had a mental age of ten years in order to get a laugh out of his audience. Then something began to happen in recent years. Beginning to a minor extent with his performance as a surrogate father in Big Daddy, the obnoxious idiot child Sandler began to give way to the confused, complex adult Sandler. When Tom Cruise turned down the role of a major PTSD sufferer who basically lives in the kind of hell those outside of it cannot see due to the loss of his family, Sandler stepped in and made it his own. Naturally, the cinema-going public was somewhat skeptical, wondering if Sandler had the dramatic ability to pull off such a character. Convincingly acting out the struggles of one who has an interest taken in him by an increasingly overloaded public mental health system is a challenge for any actor. It is, in point of fact, one of the few things harder than intentional comedy.
So when I say that as an autistic sufferer of PTSD myself, I find Sandler's portrayal constantly hitting the nail upon the head, I want you to understand my full meaning here. Everyone who has been let down by the system, even if it is not to the extremes brought about by the WTC attacks, can take comfort in the fact that Sandler and the script he worked from were willing to speak out on their behalf. Although the story only seems to depict a handful of days in the character's life, Sandler convinces us that his although his character is putting up a good pretence otherwise, he is literally going through hell. The scene towards the end when we see a flashback of Sandler's character in a happier time with his wife and children is reminiscent of the house-walking flashbacks in RoboCop. They are just brief images of what once was, but they are such a contrast to what is now in the reality of the film that they simply cannot fail to induce tears. That Sandler handles his character so well in all scenes of this nature proves he is more than his Happy Gilmore act has suggested.
Of course, no film can deliver such a complex story without a good supporting cast. Everyone from the secondary lead to the cameos is spot-on here. Don Cheadle is simply magic as Sandler's onetime college roommate. The two characters joke with each other in a highly personal and sometimes borderline offensive manner that only two men who have known each other inside out can do. Saffron Burrows strikes dramatic gold as a nymphomaniac character who alternates between threatening to make big trouble for Cheadle and attempting to redeem herself. But the real surprise here is Liv Tyler as a psychiatrist who eventually agrees to attempt to help Sandler. I say she is a pleasant surprise because in context of my dealings with the poor souls who are bravely trying to help with the flood of traumatised autistic patients among my generation, Ms. Tyler's performance reminds me very much of them. Several scenes show her attempting to fight a system that often fails to recognise a conventional approach frequently does more harm than good.
Donald Sutherland gets a walk-on that would make Judge Judy proud, too. One of Reign Over Me's most endearing plot threads is the attempts by the in-laws to bring themselves into the lives of Sandler's character, whether he likes it or not. After the stress of more terror alerts and more isolation gets to be too much for Sandler's character, an incident involving the police ends with these in-laws attempting to negate his attempts to deal with his own problems in his own way. Sutherland gives this rather dullard mob the kind of talking to they deserve, in what would have to rank as one of the most satisfying moments Reign Over Me has to offer. And believe me, there are quite a few of those. Reign Over Me does not satisfy because it wraps everything neatly in a happy ending. It satisfies because it puts the characters who need it most on the beginnings of a new path. It is no exaggeration to say that if social services and psychiatric services were this successful all the time, our world would be a much happier place.
If I do have a complaint about Reign Over Me, it is that some details of the film seem a little rushed or incomplete. Details such as how Cheadle's character deals with Sandler's coming back into his life and how apparently messed up Sandler's character is seem a little threadbare at times. The attempts to get advice and help from a professional psychiatrist are very well-done, but the moments of outbursts on Sandler's part seem a little confused in their writing. Perhaps these segments of the plot were cut for time, I do not know. On the other hand, some areas of the film benefit from the lack of detail. Aside from the moments when Cheadle's character interacts with Sandler's, we have little idea of what the latter does from day to day. All we learn along the way, up to the point where things boil over and the professionals become involved, is that the life of Sandler's character is an unstructured mess. I found myself relating to that on so many levels it was scary.
In all, Reign Over Me is a nine out of ten film. The editing and writing sometimes fumbles the ball, but the actors all pick it back up again and hit it out of the park. It is even more fun to watch and speculate on why Tom Cruise turned it down.
So when I say that as an autistic sufferer of PTSD myself, I find Sandler's portrayal constantly hitting the nail upon the head, I want you to understand my full meaning here. Everyone who has been let down by the system, even if it is not to the extremes brought about by the WTC attacks, can take comfort in the fact that Sandler and the script he worked from were willing to speak out on their behalf. Although the story only seems to depict a handful of days in the character's life, Sandler convinces us that his although his character is putting up a good pretence otherwise, he is literally going through hell. The scene towards the end when we see a flashback of Sandler's character in a happier time with his wife and children is reminiscent of the house-walking flashbacks in RoboCop. They are just brief images of what once was, but they are such a contrast to what is now in the reality of the film that they simply cannot fail to induce tears. That Sandler handles his character so well in all scenes of this nature proves he is more than his Happy Gilmore act has suggested.
Of course, no film can deliver such a complex story without a good supporting cast. Everyone from the secondary lead to the cameos is spot-on here. Don Cheadle is simply magic as Sandler's onetime college roommate. The two characters joke with each other in a highly personal and sometimes borderline offensive manner that only two men who have known each other inside out can do. Saffron Burrows strikes dramatic gold as a nymphomaniac character who alternates between threatening to make big trouble for Cheadle and attempting to redeem herself. But the real surprise here is Liv Tyler as a psychiatrist who eventually agrees to attempt to help Sandler. I say she is a pleasant surprise because in context of my dealings with the poor souls who are bravely trying to help with the flood of traumatised autistic patients among my generation, Ms. Tyler's performance reminds me very much of them. Several scenes show her attempting to fight a system that often fails to recognise a conventional approach frequently does more harm than good.
Donald Sutherland gets a walk-on that would make Judge Judy proud, too. One of Reign Over Me's most endearing plot threads is the attempts by the in-laws to bring themselves into the lives of Sandler's character, whether he likes it or not. After the stress of more terror alerts and more isolation gets to be too much for Sandler's character, an incident involving the police ends with these in-laws attempting to negate his attempts to deal with his own problems in his own way. Sutherland gives this rather dullard mob the kind of talking to they deserve, in what would have to rank as one of the most satisfying moments Reign Over Me has to offer. And believe me, there are quite a few of those. Reign Over Me does not satisfy because it wraps everything neatly in a happy ending. It satisfies because it puts the characters who need it most on the beginnings of a new path. It is no exaggeration to say that if social services and psychiatric services were this successful all the time, our world would be a much happier place.
If I do have a complaint about Reign Over Me, it is that some details of the film seem a little rushed or incomplete. Details such as how Cheadle's character deals with Sandler's coming back into his life and how apparently messed up Sandler's character is seem a little threadbare at times. The attempts to get advice and help from a professional psychiatrist are very well-done, but the moments of outbursts on Sandler's part seem a little confused in their writing. Perhaps these segments of the plot were cut for time, I do not know. On the other hand, some areas of the film benefit from the lack of detail. Aside from the moments when Cheadle's character interacts with Sandler's, we have little idea of what the latter does from day to day. All we learn along the way, up to the point where things boil over and the professionals become involved, is that the life of Sandler's character is an unstructured mess. I found myself relating to that on so many levels it was scary.
In all, Reign Over Me is a nine out of ten film. The editing and writing sometimes fumbles the ball, but the actors all pick it back up again and hit it out of the park. It is even more fun to watch and speculate on why Tom Cruise turned it down.