Reign Over Me is a 2007 American buddy drama film written and directed by Mike Binder, produced by his brother Jack Binder, and starring Adam Sandler, Don Cheadle, Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler, Saffron Burrows, and Donald Sutherland. The film follows the story of former college roommates and old friends Alan and Charlie, the latter of whom is struggling with depression after the death of his wife and daughters in the September 11 attacks. This was Melinda Dillon's final film role.

Distributed by Columbia Pictures, the film was theatrically released on March 23, 2007, and on DVD and Blu-ray on October 9, 2007. It is the first of two films produced by Madison 23 Productions, a drama subsidiary of Sandler's Happy Madison Productions.

Plot

After his wife and daughters died in a plane that struck the World Trade Center on 9/11, Charlie Fineman lost everything important in his life. Five years have passed since his family died, and now the once-successful and sociable man has become a withdrawn shadow of his former self. He does not discuss his loss, causing his late wife's parents, Jonathan and Ginger Timpleman, to worry for his sanity, believing that he has struck the tragedy from his mind.

When fate brings Charlie and his long-ago college roommate Alan Johnson together on a Manhattan street corner, Alan is shocked to see just how far his old friend has fallen. Charlie's hair is long and he wears a headset constantly, letting music drown out any mentions of his wife and children.

Charlie and Alan spend a day hanging out together. In the evening, the former takes him along to a gig where he is the drummer for a loud band. Afterwards, trying to make small talk over drinks, Alan mentions the place would be good for the now single Charlie to meet a woman and he explodes in anger.

Then Alan, a successful dentist, is falsely accused of assault by a former patient as revenge for rejecting her sexual advances. Right after leaving his office, Charlie's former mother-in-law approaches him, trying to uncover why Charlie is shutting them out. As he has no other family, and the recently retired couple's plan had been to help care for their granddaughters, they hope to connect with him.

One night, Charlie shows up unannounced at Alan's, waking his wife and daughter. They go out for awhile. Alan gives him details of the situation with the false accusations of the woman at his dental office, which Charlie laughs about.

Day after day, Charlie gets Alan to come over and spend time with him with late nights. He gets him addicted to interactive video games in his apartment, another time he has him do a triple feature Mel Brooks' movie marathon, and after a while Alan's wife gets fed up with his staying out.

while he and Charlie are hanging out, Alan's father dies, and Alan is angered at Charlie's apparent apathy. Later, Charlie attempts to give him a million dollars of government payout money as an apology, but Alan rejects the money and they reconcile.

Alan endeavors to bring Charlie out of his shell by convincing him to see a therapist. Barely communicative, he ends every session after only a couple of minutes. His therapist, Angela, says he needs to tell the story about his family to someone eventually.

Charlie immediately tells Alan his tragic story in the therapist's waiting room. He describes his three young daughters, wife and dog in detail, explaining how they were on one of the Boston-LAX flight hijacked by terrorists which crashed into the World Trade Towers.

Later on, for a few days Charlie changes his routine. He starts having flashes of his family in the apartment, not watching his usual comedies. Then, following a suicide by cop attempt, Charlie ends up in a psychiatric ward.

Legal proceedings commence, and Judge David Raines must determine whether to commit Charlie to psychiatric care. Charlie suffers a breakdown caused by the Templemans' lawyer freely showing photos of his family in the courtroom. So, Raines leaves the decision to the Timplemans, asking them to think of what their daughter would want for him.

Charlie approaches the Timplemans in the lobby of the courthouse, stating that he does not carry pictures nor discuss his family because he sees them every day, in the faces of people walking down the street. They decide that he should not be committed; instead, Charlie moves to a new apartment, leaving behind the painful memories associated with his former home.

Alan visits Charlie in his new home and his wife calls and tells him "I love you and just want you to come home." The apartment's doorman brings out Charlie's scooter, telling Alan not to leave stuff lying around. He tells the doorman to take it back upstairs, but he does not respond. Not knowing what to do, Alan decides to ride home on the scooter.

Cast

Soundtrack

The many songs during the film include Bruce Springsteen's "Out in the Street" and "Drive All Night", "Simple Man" by Graham Nash, and a few songs by the Who, including the titular "Love, Reign o'er Me". The latter appears on the film's soundtrack, along with a cover version recorded specifically for the film by Pearl Jam.

Televised trailers featured the songs "Ashes" by English band Embrace, "All These Things That I've Done" by the Killers, "How to Save a Life" by the Fray, and "In This Life" by Chantal Kreviazuk.

The score was written by Rolfe Kent and orchestrated by Tony Blondal.

Reception

Box office

In the United States and Canada, Reign Over Me grossed $19.7million, with $2.6million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $22.2million, against a budget of $20million. It opened at No.8, its first of two consecutive weeks in the Top10 at the domestic box office.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 64% of 151 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Reign Over Me is a charming, affecting tale of friendship and loss, with solid performances from Adam Sandler as a broken, grief-stricken man and Don Cheadle as his old friend and savior." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 61 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly gave Reign Over Me a B− rating, calling the film "a strange, black-and-blue therapeutic drama equally mottled with likable good intentions and agitating clumsiness." She shared her own discomfort with seeing the September 11 attacks casually included as a plot device in a fictional dramedy, though praised the film's performances and story. A. O. Scott, writing for The New York Times, found the film "maddeningly uneven… so many moments of grace followed by so many stumbles and fumbles".

The video gaming blog Kotaku praised Reign Over Me's inclusion of the video game Shadow of the Colossus, stating that it "must be one of the first Hollywood films, if not the first, to deal with games thematically and intelligently". In an interview with Vogue Magazine in 2017, when a reporter asked British actress Daisy Ridley which film makes her cry the most, her response was Reign Over Me.

See also

External links