Reservation Road is pure Lifetime movie of the week melodrama, it just happens to feature some fairly big name actors. It's depressing as hell and I'm not sure who this movie is supposed to appeal to. I guess maybe if you'd lost someone close to you because of a hit-and-run accident, there might be something here for you, but if not, I'm not sure why anyone would enjoy this movie.

The plot is pretty basic. Ethan and Grace (Phoenix and Connelly) are married parents whose son is killed by Dwight in a hit-and-run accident. Dwight feels guilty but doesn't turn himself in. Ethan and Grace are sad. Grace tries to put her life back together, while Ethan becomes obsessed with finding the driver. In one of those bizarre, only happens in the movies, twists, Ethan hires a lawyer to help him catch the perpetrator and the lawyer turns out to be Dwight, who understandably isn't overly anxious for Ethan to discover the driver's identity.

Nearly all of the characters here are one-note characters, with the exception of Dwight. Ethan is obsessed. Grace is sad. Dwight is the only character who develops over the course of the movie. Killing someone else's son ends up bringing him closer to his own son, whom because of a messy divorce he only gets to see on a limited basis. What exactly is this movie saying when it shows the "bad guy" in this scenario as the most human?

I'm a fan of the beautiful and talented Jennifer Connelly and she does her usual good job of acting in what is really a pretty small part. She's the only reason I watched this movie. Her appearance didn't make the movie any better though.

There's not very much else for me to say about this movie. It's depressing and sad. It's not a topic I enjoyed watching a movie about. It offers no startling insights and I can't say it was entertaining and I didn't learn anything at the end of it. I'm pretty much baffled as to what the point of this movie actually was.

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