Review of Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) by Sherry L — 25 Jul 2009

A story about a family that gets shattered when the husband is tragically killed and the wife is struggling with accepting that she now has to raise their two children on her own, and stop blaming people for what happened.

Audrey's husband, Brian gets shot one evening when he tried to prevent some guy from beating the hell out of his girlfriend. Consequently, the guy took his gun, shot his girlfriend, Brian, and finally himself.

The time after Brian's gets of course incredibly hard for Audrey and her children, but to ease the pain she invited Brian's best friend Jerry, who is a heroin addict, to live with them some time.

Audrey disliked Jerry, the time Brian was seeing him, but now she has a need of sharing the pain with someone, even though she can't help asking why it had to be Brian who has to be killed and why Jerry, who has such a worthless and pointless life, is still living.

Jerry is offered to live with Audrey and her two children, in stead of living at the rehab, while he does some work on their house and garden. Progressivly the children get really attached to Jerry, (which is mutual) and they soon forget the loss of their father when being with Jerry.

Audrey on the other hand doesn't feel ready to have someone in her life to take Jerry's place to she rejects Jerry after a while and disappoints the children terribly, who thought that Jerry was gonna stay forever.

This movie certainly has it's qualities, but there are some details that bother me. Some things in the lines and the turnings feels a tiny little bit unrealistic, or just overly dramatized, for example when Audrey asks Jerry right into his face why it had to be Brian, and not him who was killed. I mean, that could be a thing that one is thinking but not very often actually saying. How many people would actually say it?

And whatsmore I thought it was a bit (or extremely!) wrong by Audrey of acting the way she did, when she rejected Jerry without thinking that the children might need him. I had completely lost her sympathy by then.

And I thought it felt a bit strange how easily Jerry could overcome his addiction, and how he relapsed after Audrey rejected him (too Hollywood-ish for my taste...).

Anyway I thought the movie was worth it's time but not much more. I liked Benicio Del Toro's character and I thought his acting was great, but the rest just didn't synch that well.