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All Movie Info
Starring:
Nathan Adloff, John Cusack, Doug Dearth, Michael Thomas Dunn, Andrea Frisby, Alessandro Nivola, Mary Kay Place, Michael Ciesla, Brian Patrick Farrell, Dana Lynne Gilhooley, Olivia T. Marcukaitis, Gracie Bednarczyk, Heather O. Craig, Zach Gray, Suzanne Lang, Olivia T. Marcukaitis, Eric Miles, Shélan O'Keefe, Jeff Freeman, Danni Kaitlyn Garrison
Directed By:
James C. Strouse
Written By:
James C. Strouse
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Grace is Gone (2007)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
December 21st, 2007
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'Grace Is Gone' features John Cusack in one of his best performances, and he has had a good year, with 1408 and Martian Child, movies that got audiences interested in him again, after Identity, and The Ice Harvest, and maybe those who haven't heard of him since High Fidelity or Say Anything. In this film, he plays Stanley Phillips, a store manager who wanted to join the army, but was rejected because of bad eyesight. His wife, Grace, is serving in Iraq, and he would gladly be there in her place if he could, but he looks after their two daughters Heidi (Shelan O'Keefe) and Dawn (Gracie Bednarczyk). One day, Stanley is informed that Grace has been killed, and he cannot bring himself to break the news to Heidi and Dawn, so he postpones it, and spontaneously offers to take them to a beloved theme park in Florida, hoping the road trip will give him time to think about what he has to tell him, and to give them one last moment of happiness before in indefinite period of crushing grief. Heidi starts to suspect that something is wrong, and it would be a matter of time before both girls realize that their mother has yet to come home, and that something must have happened to her. The road trip itself is not that interesting, and neither are the scenes with Stanley's brother (Alessandro Nivola), a liberal, there to provide political antagonism, as Stanley is an ardent supporter of the war and presumably of the Bush presidency. But, what is effective is how Stanley attempts to cope with his wife's death, how he deals with his feelings of guilt, which arise from the fact that he believes it should have been him fighting in Iraq instead of her.
He is not like Cindy Sheehan; Grace's death is not enough to turn him against the war, but then this is largely irrelevant. Politics is not a major theme of the movie, and is only briefly interjected into the proceedings, in the form of Nivola's character, there could have been a broad swipe at the fiasco in Iraq, but writer-director James C Strouse passes on this, wisely I think, and chooses to focus on how a military casualty, one of thousands, affects a man and his family. The story is personalized and always feels genuine, never manipulative, and Cusack is superbly convincing, and realistic in his responses and actions. O'Keefe and Bednarczyk are also very good.
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