Moonlight Mile [DVD] [2003]

When "Moonlight Mile" begins it is three days after Diana Floss (Careena Melia) was shot in an ice cream shoppe across the street from her father's commercial reality office. A guy walked in intending to gun down his wife; she received two bullets in the head but survived, while Diana was killed. Now Joe finds himself living with Ben and JoJo trying to figure out what to do next. Part of this is becoming Ben's partner in what will now be called "Floss & Son," although commercial realty in a small New England economically depressed town in the early 1970s does not make much sense. But Ben has lost a daughter and apparently now wants a son, while the tart tongued JoJo has stopped writing, and in the absence of a plan for his life Joe feels obligated to help them deal with their loss.

Before we can decide what this movie is going to be about it takes a sudden turn. Ben wakes up and realizes that he never stopped the printer from sending out the invitations to the wedding that is never going to happen and wants Joe to stop them from being mailed out ("It would just be too uncomfortable"). Joe ends up at the old fashioned local post office where he meets Bertie Knox (Ellen Pompeo), who does not bat an eye at the idea of some strange guy walking into the place and wanting to pull 75 wedding invitations out of the mail. Ben is attracted to Bertie; it is impossible not to be because this is one of the most captivating appearances of a young female character in a film (think Kate Hudson in "Almost Famous"). But then it dawns on us that Ben's fiancé was just brutally murdered a few days earlier. Is Joe reaching out in his despair, incredibly shallow, or is there something else going on here?

So, suddenly a film about three people trying to get beyond the death of someone they love is competing with a romance. Do not worry, because eventually everything will make sense. What confused me the most was that this was a period film, because that was not especially clear to me. Why should the film be set in the early 1970s? It has to be for a reason more than having a dog named Nixon. But the Vietnam War comes into play because Bertie thinks Joe is a draft dodger at first (how else to explain why he is still in town) and more importantly because she also has lost someone: her boyfriend was declared M.I.A. in Vietnam three years earlier. Joe has found something of a kindred spirit.

"Moonlight Mile" is not a great film, despite the stellar cast, mainly because the deep dark secret that is the film's ticking time bomb ends up smacking more of melodrama than tragedy. It is one of those things that if you think about it rather than just accept it then the holes in the logic of it all become rather glaring. Ultimately the film belongs not to Brad Silberling or his surrogate character Joe, but rather to that of Bertie. It is rather amazing that Ellen Pompeo can steal this film from all those veteran actors with their Oscars. But if you can create a character in performance where it makes perfect sense that someone who just buried their fiancé the day before could be smitten with a total stranger, then you have got to be impressed. You can write what you want and do whatever with the lighting, but such magic can only be created by performance. Sarandon is totally on target in her role, as is Hunter, but Pompeo provides the memorable performance in this film.

The film is a perceptive and not overly sentimental depiction of the mourning of the Walking Wounded after the grave of a loved one is covered over and the friends and food of Shiva week are gone. (The Floss family is Jewish.) Sarandon has perhaps the meatiest role as JoJo. Her monolog to Joe about what keeps her and Ben together (and bickering) after 31 years is the Great Truth of many marriages, I suspect, and possibly the movie's best single scene.

Notwithstanding my high regard for the film, I'm bothered by the niggling feeling that Gyllenhall's portrayal of Joe was too one dimensional. It's as if his life begins with the opening scene. At no time does the audience learn about his past. Where was he born and raised? Does he have siblings or living parents? Did he have dreams of being anything before meeting Diana? It's like he's this orphan, a blank slate upon which his connection with the Floss family writes. There's no depth to the young man, and this viewer was relieved when the local USPS station manager and part-time bar waitress Bertie (Ellen Pompeo) got him to snap out of his funk. Bertie herself is one of the Walking Wounded, her boyfriend now being MIA in Vietnam for a couple of years. (The film is set in the early 70s).

I can only give MOONLIGHT MILE four and a half stars because of my stated reservations about Joe's persona, but am comfortable with the fact that this rating system will round it up to five.