Reign Over Me

Dentist “Alan” (Don Cheadle) has built up a decent practice, is happily married with two children and he even has the Volvo. Outwardly content, he is finding things are starting to overwhelm him a bit - especially when patient “Angela” (Liv Tyler) asks for some extra veneer on her veneer! Travelling home one afternoon he espies the headphone-wearing “Charlie” (Adam Sandler) who he recalls he shared a flat with years ago at college. What he doesn’t know is that 9/11 impacted very profoundly on his friend and with little to live for, “Charlie” is stuck in a maelstrom of despair that although on an entirely different scale from “Alan”, he needs to talk about too. Suffice to say that this is a bit like getting blood from a stone. “Charlie” has given up on life and on himself, but can his friend help him navigate his grief and his loneliness whilst dealing with a few demons of his own? The last half hour of this do redeem it to an extent, especially when we are left with just Cheadle and Sandler to demonstrate what has become an intensely personal relationship. Sadly, though, I didn’t find enough of that intensity and there were too many distractions to the story to sustain the thrust for me. Perhaps the object was to compare the lesser “inconveniences” of “Alan” with the tragic ones of “Charlie”, but that fell a bit short for me as the personality of “Charlie” wasn't explored anything like deep enough and the attempts at humour fell rather flat. It’s a tough subject to address, dealing with issues of grief and of being a victim and at times it does it potently, just not with enough sustained conviction. Perhaps it’s Sandler setting out to prove he has more than one string to his bow, but I was often unconvinced.

The really striking thing for someone who doesn't live in New York and isn't even American is that you don't initially realize what this film is about, even though you watched 9-11 as it happened on the TV. When I saw this several years ago for the first time, I found it really very moving and the more the film progressed, the more you really began to empathise with the deep trauma that had happened on an individual and a citywide level. I shall watch it again this evening (9/11/2026) and leave an updated part of this review. But I can already rate it at an 8 because it has stayed in my mind since I first watched it.