Synopsis
Two fathers' lives intersect when one of them is involved in a terrible and sudden hit-and-run car accident that leaves the other's son dead. In response, the two men react in unexpected ways as a reckoning looms in the near future.
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Cast
- Joaquin PhoenixEthan Learner
- Jennifer ConnellyGrace Learner
- Elle FanningEmma Learner
- Sean CurleyJosh Learner
- Mark RuffaloDwight Arno
- Mira SorvinoRuth Wheldon
- Gary KohnNorris Wheldon
- Eddie AldersonLucas Arno
- Antoni CoroneSergeant Burke
- John SlatterySteve
Recommendations
- 91
Entertainment Weekly
There's a kind of tough beauty to this deft, satisfying thriller. - 83
The A.V. Club
It's a relentlessly downbeat, well-acted melodrama that's easy to admire, but intentionally impossible to enjoy. - 63
ReelViews
The book tore at my heart; the movie left me strangely unmoved. - 50
Chicago Tribune
The best efforts of the performers cannot authenticate a plot that no longer feels inevitable. It feels contrived. And the audience stays at a remove instead of entering someone else’s nightmare. - 50
Rolling Stone
Even the best actors -- and I'd rank Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo among their generation's finest -- can't save a movie that aims for tragedy but stalls at soap opera. - 42
Christian Science Monitor
There is no reason why Reservation Road could not have been great. George has co-written some powerful films in the past, including two for Daniel Day-Lewis, "In the Name of the Father" and "The Boxer." He is not wrong to want to mainline intensity here, but the inner lives of these men have not been explored, only displayed. - 40
The Hollywood Reporter
Paints itself into a corner, creating a static situation in which everyone is either stymied or wracked by indecision, leaving the movie free for its two male leads to wallow in self-pity, remorse and bad behavior. - 40
Variety
A dramatic situation that should be wrenching is mostly tedious in Reservation Road.
