Grace is Gone (5 out of 10)

I may stand alone in this (if the ovation as John Cusack was introduced is any indication) but I didn't buy this film. I didn't fall for the story and I wasn't won over by Cusacks performance as former army man and current home store manager Stanley Phillips. He never felt comfortable as the strict disciplinarian that this role requires and he never seemed to make a choice as to Stanley's emotional state. Was he holding it all in? Was he cracking up? Was his strength derived from his silence? Was his silence a result of his weakness? I've always enjoyed Cusack as an actor, but looking back I guess that was in less demanding roles. In my mind he was not able to enter the darkness that this role required. He tried, but never got there. Since he is featured throughout, the experience suffered greatly for me by his inability to give us a Chris Cooper in American Beauty or a Great Santini. This is one of the problems of an actor producing his own movie. Actors are terrible at knowing what roles they are right for. Cusack in this case isn't bad, he just isn't good enough. The girls playing his two daughters grow into their roles and do a good enough job, but I guess we have to put the blame for the weakness of this film squarely on writer/director James C Strouse. He didn't seem able to bring great performances out of his actors and he didn't seem to have the ability to rework the script while filming to tighten up the production. His characters visit "The Enchanted Garden" but it's supposed to be DisneyWorld and Stanley works at "The Home Store" but it's supposed to be Home Depot and they buy clothes at "Value City" but it's supposed to be WalMart. If you're going to do a topographical film about a real war, shouldn't you use real places? If it's a budgeting thing I understand the problem but as a viewer it bothered me. The film gets preachy and annoying when Strouse introduces the liberal brother and the idea of patriotism for the sake of patriotism is thread bare. Pick a side and stick to it, if I want impartial journalism I'll watch the British News. As a side note, I believe this film needed and would have been greatly helped by the Mary Kay Place character (Grace's mother) that ended up on the cutting room floor. The grating soundtrack never failed to take you right out of the action. This film does get you to cry at the end, but it is the subject matter, not the way the subject matter is crafted that does it. Never surprising, never enthralling, Grace is Gone is a TV Movie in Feature clothing. - Brahman