Moonlight Mile (2002)

In `Moonlight Mile' a middle aged couple, along with their prospective son-in-law, attempt to come to terms with the sudden, senseless murder of their daughter right on the eve of her wedding. Oddly enough, considering the grave nature of the subject matter at hand, it is amazing just how upbeat and sunny much of `Moonlight Mile' turns out to be. This is a film about death that does not come across as lugubrious and morbid – though often at a price. We occasionally sense that it is avoiding the ugly darkness of the subject it has chosen to tackle. Perhaps the film's cheery, optimistic tone is just that spoonful of sugar we need to help the medicine go down.

Writer/director Brad Silberling certainly knows whereof he speaks. He based his tale on the death of his own girlfriend, actress Rebecca Schaeffer, who was slain by a crazed fan in 1989. As a result of his personal experience, Silberling is particularly adroit at dramatizing the utter inadequacy of people's responses to grieving loved ones. He captures with dead-on accuracy the superficiality and hollowness of the clichés, shibboleths and expressions of concern proffered, however well intentionally, in the name of `compassion' and `understanding.' Silberling shows that, in a time of grief this all-encompassing, a family unit must turn in upon itself, shutting out the rest of the world in the process.

This is what happens with the Floss family. Ben and JoJo can speak openly and frankly about their daughter only with each other and with the young man, Joe, who was on the brink of becoming a member of their family and who not only lives with the couple but is all set to become a partner in Ben's commercial real estate company. In a way, Silberling has set a difficult task for himself right from the start. By choosing to not show us Diana before her murder, we find ourselves unable to sense the void her death has left in the lives of these three people. We are caught a bit off guard by the strangely casual tone of the opening sequences in which the family prepares for and attends the girl's funeral. Ben, JoJo and Joe all seem to be taking this shocking death a bit too much in stride. It is hard for us to believe that she has only been dead for three days when the story opens. Yet, on the other hand, we know that people do often manage to find amazing stores of inner strength that help them get through the early stages of a person's death – only to collapse into grief once the funeral is over and all the guests have gone home. This happens to be the case here – though the moments of despair in this film never plunge quite to the depths of those in, say, `Ordinary People.' In fact this might almost be called `Ordinary People-Lite,' a film about grief for a mass audience that doesn't want to be too disturbed by the experience.

That may sound like a more negative assessment of the film than I am trying to convey, for `Moonlight Mile' is an often sharp and incisive piece of moviemaking, intelligently written and beautifully acted by Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ellen Pompeo as the postal worker who falls for the grieving husband-to-be. Set in New England in the 1970's (for no reason I can fathom, actually), the film is really the story of Joe and his coming to grips with the reality of his situation. Essentially weak-willed and eager to please everyone about him, Joe has to decide whether to allow himself to become absorbed into the lives and world of this couple

Fmovies: Jake Gylenhaal reprises (see: Donnie Darko) the sensitive, slightly confused young man searching for truth and its attendant emotional clarity. The characters (with the possible exception of Sarandon) attempt to hide truth, mostly from themselves, with silence and various feats of mental slight of hand. When all is finally revealed, I would have liked to believe that the characters would act nobly the way they do here, even if the character dialogue up to this point has not given all of them razor sharp definition. However, it is the acting of the cast (especially Hoffmann's) that makes us believe they are the people we see at the end of the movie, and their synergy with Brad Silberling's writing/directing makes the film work. (It is particularly revealing that Silberling had Sarandon and Hoffman in mind when he wrote the original draft; rent DVD if possible) We are convinced of the characters' virtue through well-written dialogue and well thought out character relationships. Would Sarandon's "wickedly honest" character really have married a schmuck? No, indirectly taking the heat off Hoffmann's character to prove himself prior to his ultimate acceptance of the truth. What about Bertie? (played by the lovely Ellen Pompeo - read: attractive, not just another hot airhead) Her involvement with the Gylenhaal character adds an extra twist to the Gylenhall-Sarandon-Hoffman triangle and her presence as a love interest adds levity to an otherwise pretty serious subject, but should she really get as close to the Gylenhaal character as quickly as we're led to believe? What do they have in common? The death of someone close and a Rolling Stones song nobody heard of before the title of this movie. Why did their involvement have to be a rapidly flourishing romantic one? I think an I-like-you-and-you-like-me would have been sufficient to complicate the situations in business and on the home front vis-a-vis Gylenhaal's former relationship with Hoffman and Sarandon's daughter. The rest of the character relationships develop naturally, at a well-measured pace, but this one races miles ahead. This is the only real flaw I found with the movie. The soundtrack is fantastic and also shows vision on the part of Silberling in that he conceived of certain key scenes with these songs in mind.

This movie is undeniably an emotional twister ride, but it makes you want to ride it again. This movie has a similar theme to In The Bedroom. Imagine a movie that deals with death as a part of life, grief with comfort in others, anger of loss. Imagine a movie that deals with relationships between strangers and family, love and hate. Imagine the struggle between accountability and being hurtful, living your life for someone else to help them and fulfilling your desires......now imagine that the movie is not the waste of time In the Bedroom was and you've got THE MOONLIGHT MILE. (does this speech remind you of Matthew McConaughey in A Time To Kill? I hope so)

OK. This movie is fantastic. It is worth seeing. It has Susan Sarandon's best performance since Dead Man Walking. Dustin Hoffman is steady as a rock throughout and Jake Gyllenhaal seems as if he stumbles into nailing the role perfectly. And Ellen Pompeo is such a natural beauty. This is a much more upbeat way of dealing with the only guarantee in life (which is death) than in the bedroom, city of angels (which is also done by brad siberling) or anything else I've seen recently. It is very real and honest and not enough movies can be this way....deeply depressing for moments, hopeful for others, and times where you're not sure how they'll react. But everything fits. It has a great script and the soundtrack is really fitting for the movie. I'm not sure what the hell the user Li-1 was talking about when he said this movie's soundtrack was a ripoff of American Beauty....NONE OF THE SONGS ARE THE SAME EINSTEIN!!! I'm giving this movie a 10/10 even though it's really a 9/10 because other people leaving reviews are not rating it accurately.

RENT THIS MOVIE. WATCH IT TWICE.

Moonlight Mile fmovies. This is an absolute gem of a movie. The script is absolutely delicious, the acting out-standing and to put it bluntly, this film is brilliant.

Joe Nast's (Gyllenhaal) world suddenly becomes very claustrophobic when his fiance, Diana, is shot dead. Now Joe is stuck in Diana's child-hood home with her two grieving parents; Jo-Jo (Sarandon) and Ben (Hoffman) who both deal with their loss in very different ways. Ben wants to keep moving, not slow down long enough to feel the pain of it all while Jo-Jo just lets her emotions run rampant. Joe, meanwhile, doesn't know what to do with himself. Does he stay in the small town, and go into commercial real-estate with Diana's father? Or does he leave, and find out what he wants to do? The second choice becomes increasingly tempting when Joe meets local waitress and postal-employee, Bertie (Pompeo), who is dealing with the loss of her own loved one, Cal, who left for Vietnam 3 years ago and doesnt look to ever be coming back. Joe and Bertie reluctantly fall for each other, and the relationship and trial of Diana's murderer propels Joe to confront all of his battling emotions and release a secret he's been desperately trying to communicate to Jo-Jo and Ben.

Gyllenhaal, Sarandon, Hoffman and even new-comer Pompeo are absolutely magnificent. There is a comedic twist in Moonlight Mile, which they all play very well, but know when to shift gears and tug the audience's heart strings. Each deliver a beautiful performance with the help of director and writer Brad Silberling, a genius who you should be sure to be on the look out for.

I have read some real hair-pulling comments about this remarkable film. Some people have seriously bagged the hell out of it. But these are the same people who couldnt even realize where they pulled the title 'moonlight mile' from. For those idiots, it came from Bertie's song 'Moonlight Mile' by the Rolling Stones that Joe plays on the jukebox.

Dont be fooled. This film can appear slow at times, but if you stick with it, you realize that every single sentence, every solitary scene, has a deeper meaning. Take the symbolism of the 'watches' for example. This is a smart film, dont expect to just sit there and not have to do any thinking- absorb it, cheesy as it sounds, it truly is magnificent. appreciate moonlight mile, dont just write it off like some loser's have.

This movie was a surprise to me. Tuned it in on HBO and enjoyed the entire movie, laughing out loud at several surprise parts. The characters run the gamut of emotions, and those who did not enjoy this movie never took the time to gauge the feelings of the characters involved. Ellen Pompeo's character is fabulous, Dustin Hoffman's whole demeanor shows a father's grief, but in his own way.

I highly recommend this movie to those who take a little time to read the characters, and who don't expect the director and writer to spell it all out for them.

Enjoy!

*** out of ****

While not quite a great movie (it just barely misses the mark), Moonlight Mile is still an excellent drama that showcases some of the finest acting talent around, wrapped amidst a beautifully told story of a young man (Jake Gyllenhaal) who's trying to do what everyone expects out of him, but against the desire of following his own heart.

Moonlight Mile plays as a cathartic experience. The premise bears truth to it, as it parallels writer/director Brad Siberling's own real-life experience when his girlfriend was murdered by an obsessive fan. But most importantly, almost every part of this movie feels natural in its emotions and storytelling, not the result of some sentimental hackjob put together by a big studio. Siberling's intent is to portray a normal family dealing with life, loss, and love and whatever obstacles may come their way and he does a fine job of it.

There are moments Moonlight Mile doesn't entirely ring true, but those moments are glossed over by the acting. From Gyllenhaal to Ellen Pompeo to Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon, the cast is uniformly superb. Even though the climax is set in a courtroom (typically the setting for cliche hell in dramas), Gyllenhaal's emotional outpour makes the scene work almost magnificently.

An admittedly very irksome element of the film is the score, which is yet again another rip-off of the music to American Beauty. Moonlight Mile's straightforward, honest approach doesn't match the quirky tone of the score, resulting in a few off-kilter moments of balance. But otherwise, this is a first-rate, truthful drama, and certainly superior to the overrated and similary themed In the Bedroom.