Rated: R

After seeing the film you may want to go directly to the deleted scenes as I feel that all of them should have been left in the film in order to feel the pain that the family suffered. To receive the most out of the film, mature adults should view it in the position of “I wonder if this happened me, what would I do?”

n a dark night after a baseball game Dwight (Ruffalo) rushes in his SUV to get his son Lucas (Alderson) to his divorced wife’s (Sorvino) home because they are past her curfew limit. Coming up to a curve on Reservation road, Dwight gets disoriented when an oncoming car with bright headlights swerves into his lane temporarily blinding him.

At that same instant a 10 year-old boy, standing alongside the road, becomes an obstacle in his path. Dwight unavoidably hits the boy killing him instantly. In shock, no witnesses and distraught, Dwight chooses to drive away from the scene making it a crime of manslaughter. So sets up the story of guilt, deception and despair, and a father's (Phoenix) determination to catch the killer.

Although the script has good intentions, several coincidences in the film make it hard to accept. The scriptwriter expects the audience to accept too many things that seem inconceivable and therefore distracts from the horror that the accident caused.

Reservation Road is an important film, however. The subject matter is timely and disturbing with statistics like 974 dead due to hit-and-run accidents in 2005, an increase of 20% since the year 2000. "It's an outrageous statistic," says Peter Kissinger, CEO of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

He says, "Although the increase is difficult to explain, likely factors include more cars sharing the road with more pedestrians, and increasingly distracted and aggressive drivers.” (Brad Heath, USA Today). This film brings to light the difficulties in finding the perpetrators, the devastation of loved ones and the consequences suffered from lack of judgment on the part of the driver.

Also included in the Bonus Features is an episode of the television soap Friday Night Lights, one of my favorites. You may want to watch Looking Back on Reservation Road as well, it features a lot of the personal feelings the actors had when making the film.

FINAL ANALYSIS: A very good DVD that shows how one family handles tragedy and another the circumstances derived from it.

This Reviewer's Rating: 3.5 / 5

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."