The central fear that drives Mike Binder’s Reign Over Me is the fear of seeking help. Many critics have questioned why Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) does not immediately seek help for his ex-roommate from dental school, Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler), but is it that simple? Would it be easy to write off an old friend or kin as simply insane and give them a label, saying, “You need a shrink”?
That is even more complicated and truer because they have not seen each other since their dental school years and vast emotional rifts have taken place, particularly in Charlie’s life. Alan heard on the news about what happened to Charlie and how he has been leading a disheveled life far away from his successful former life and career. Stop reading here if you know nothing about this film.
As the trailers and the movie synopsis are a little too eager to reveal, Charlie’s family was on one of the planes that crashed on 9/11, and he has so emotionally shut down that he has literally shattered his past into incomprehensible pieces. So much that he does not even (or perhaps refuses to) recognize Alan as the two meet. But now that chance has brought them together, Alan does not want this opportunity for re-acquaintance to slip by.
This theme of the willingness to acknowledge brokenness is one that writer/director Mike Binder has explored in his past movies like The Upside of Anger. And like that previous film, his story wisely avoids raising its voice more than it is comfortable with. Some have stated that the film is courting sensationalism by dealing with 9/11 and that Charlie’s anguish would be no different if his family had died from just another plane crash. But it is more courageous of Binder to tackle the subject in the low-key way that he does, devoid of any political commentary, because when all has been said, it is fundamentally the unnecessary loss of life that hurts most and makes the least sense.
Thus unfolds an effective portrait of these two men who have taken radically different paths but share the same basic apprehension towards something that many of us share: standing up to our problems. It is why Alan shares his conflicted thoughts to a psychiatrist, Angela (Liv Tyler), outside her office building instead of in her office and Charlie rides around in his scooter all the time, has cut all social connections, and gets confrontational, sometimes even violently so, when anyone discusses his past. Ultimately, however, as someone who was not part of his pivotal past event, Alan takes it upon himself to be the outsider with whom Charlie can finally share and face his own past. Alan finds some liberation, too, in rediscovering some of the fun “guy” activities that all of his academic work and busy family life had prevented him from doing.
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