Review of Grace Is Gone (2007) by Timothy S — 19 Jun 2014

A lot of movies have dealt with women coping with the loss of a man in combat, but "Grace is Gone" does a complete gender reversal in showing a husband dealing with the death of his Army wife. It's an idea that could have worked, and by all rights it should have, but this particular film takes a lot of wrong turns starting with the basic premise.

Everything that the John Cusack character does in the film seems to be the result of some sort of mental illness, and because of that, it's very difficult to feel any sympathy towards his emotionally traumatized character. It's understandable that grief hits people all in different ways, but taking your young daughters cross country to an amusement park before telling them that their mother has been killed seems irresponsible and emotionally dangerous. Not calling your work or the kids school seems foolish as well, but maybe not quite as damaging.

Cusack is, generally speaking, one of my favorite actors but he seems out of place in this. It's a maudlin performance even before he finds out about his wife's death, and surprisingly it's not very effective. His parenting style seems odd and out-of-touch even before the road trip idea, and talking to his deceased wife via the answering machine doesn't exactly scream "stability" either.

Basically, in the ill-concieved "Grace is Gone", he does everything that you shouldn't do if this were a real-life situation. A lot of people were moved by this, but I found it to be oddly cold and emotionally distant.