Rating: 
Summary: John Cassavetes Reincarnated
Review: To say that director Sean Penn is John Cassavetes reincarnated really does Penn a disservice. Although Cassavetes was a respected and groundbreaking director, his films were often inaccessible for the average viewer."The Crossing Guard" is still somewhat inaccessible but Penn is drawing on Cassavetes strengths and getting as close to accessibility as one might with a true drama. Let's call Penn a student of Cassavetes. The parallels with this film and Cassavetes "Killing of a Chinese Bookie" in style, content, pacing, etc. are too great to be mere coincidence. That Penn produced "She's So Lovely" (written by Cassevetes before his death) demonstrates that these parallels are no coincidence. Both directors are "auteurs" in the truest sense. The great strengths they share are: 1) Excellent acting skills in addition to writing and directing skills. 2) The ability to write uncontrived DRAMA. (Harder than it sounds and even harder to get produced.) Cinema has become many things, blockbusters, special effects, mindless comedy, etc. but it SHOULD BE drama first and foremost and here, it is. 3) The ability to direct actors to preserve what they have written. 4) The ability to somehow get impossible scripts produced. Flaws in the final result are more apparent than they would be in a convention production but the viewer overlooks them because she is absorbed by the DRAMA. This is a great film.
Rating: 
Summary: No wonder Madonna dumped him
Review: Ugh! I made it through forty minutes when, having reached my limit of 1500 cliches per film, I gave up. What a shallow piece of tripe! I should have known at the very beginning when a woman who had apparently lost a family member to a traffic accident said, mournfully, that she could no longer get "close to anyone" for fear they would be "taken away." It goes downhill from there, folks, if such a thing can be imagined.
Rating:
Summary: Worthless
Review: Unless you are a die hard Jack Nicholson fan DO NOT buy this movie. It's boring, slow and the acting (other then Nicholson and Houston) is incredebly poor. Sean Penn is much better actor then a writer and director. The only star goes to Nicholson's performance and sountrack.
Rating:
Summary: WAKE ME UP WHEN THIS IS OVER!!!!!!!!!!
Review: VERY BAD MOVIE.TERRIBLE.I WOULD RATHER WATCH PAINT DRY.
Rating:
Summary: A truly underrated masterpiece !!!
Review: Well, masterpiece is maybe a little exagerated, with movies like "The seventh seal" or "Casablanca" out there, but still, this movie is a beautifullly acted story about guilt and forgiveness, with Morse in one of his finest parts, and an "as always" brilliant Nicholson...As a bonus, the beautiful Springsteen song, "Missing" sets the right atmosphere at the opening of the movie...Keep going, Sean, this one was great !!! :o)
Rating:
Summary: Freedom is overrated.
Review: What happened in this movie to turn it from art house special to probably never making it to the television circuit? Let's begin with the title. It was never explained why it was called The Crossing Guard. Normally the title is used in films or it will express the overall emotion or theme of the film. In Penn's ditty, it did neither. There was even an embarrassing scene when Nicholson is driving by a crossing guard giving him a look going very slowly (in slo-motion) trying to build an emotional scene. The scene made no sense.
This will lead me to the next complaint. There was no consistency with this film. The characters were so underdeveloped that you really never had an idea what they wanted from this film or why they wanted to do this film. It felt like Nicholson was just repaying a favor for Penn. This was Nicholson's token must cry movie. I still have no clue why Anjelica Houston's character was so frigid. I did not understand any of these characters in this film. It was as if I never got to know them, yet somehow had to watch their life. Speaking of consistency, it would have been great to have some back-story in this film.
I thought that it started decently, but I would have liked to see what this family was like prior to the accident. I could have used a strong point-counterpoint. If the family were happy, going to the beach, in constant sunlight prior to the accident, then it would have provided a great start to the downfall after the accident. I would have also liked to see the relationship between Freddy and his daughter prior to the accident; it would have shed some better light as to why he was so avid on revenge and why Mary was easily able to put it behind her. Again, more consistency would have helped hold this film together easier.
Also, there really wasn't a story either. Using the rule of following a plot from point A to B to C, this film created the sense that I had jumped exactly at the B part. There was no A, half of the B was missing, and we were headed straight towards the C. That confused me greatly.
I have read some reviews for this film that have praised what Penn has done to this film and story. I have no clue if these critics have seen the same film or not.
Overall, this film was a jumbled mess of horror. It reminded me of walking into a child's room looking on the floor and seeing all sorts of toys, games, clothes, and stuffed animals just lying on the floor. I said this at the beginning of this review, and I will say it again, this film was a "mess".
Grade: * out of *****
Rating: 
Summary: Vengeance and guilt are blind alleys
Review: What happens when your child is killed in a car accident by a drunken driver ? What happens when you have killed a child in a car accident when you were driving under the influence ? For one, the drunken driver goes to prison for a while which always seems to be too short for the victim's father. For two, the drunken driver develops a sense of guilt that makes him desire to die, to be killed, to disappear. For three, the drunken driver cannot develop a normal life because of this guilt that keeps him away from his forgiving parents, that prevents him from building a normal relation with anyone, particularly a love relation. For four, the father of the victim develops a desire to really take justice in his own hands, unable that he is to forgive, to accept the death of his child as an event that cannot be repaired by any action on his part. Gone is gone and bygones must be accepted as such. But even if you let the sleeping dog sleep, there is a this dog gnawing at your innards and your soul, perverting it, rotting it, destroying it, and all reason along with it. Then you embark into a chase after the killer and try to destroy him in his turn. You become kind of schizophrenic and real life disappears for this virtual mission that you think, feel and know you have been entrusted with by fate and suffering, some even say God. Vengeance is the word for it : an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. And there is a perfect meeting of the sense of guilt in the killer and the desire to kill in the father. And yet, the film comes to a positive end, comes to forgiveness and repentance. This ending is very unrealistic. Vengeance does not know any stop, any limit, any mastering force because it comes from the deepest layers of one's instincts, impulses and drives, totally unconscious in its real motivations. Guilt cannot alleviate the suffering of the other nor the suffering of the drunken driver because it comes from the deepest ethical layers of the unconscious. On one side the desire to kill because the other has killed : a false balancing justice that is fundamentally barbaric. On the other side the desire to die because he has killed and cannot accept the fact and change his neurotic if not psychotic vision of the world and himself. Sean Penn just dreams of a way out that does exist in society, among men, for most of them, but is unrealistic when the two protagonists have reached their levels of derangement, because vengeance and unabating guilt are derangements of reason and the mind. Make it a mass reaction and you have a simple cause for war. The stronger will go at war against the weaker but the weaker will become the stronger because of his massive nature and of his sense of being invaded by some undeserved injustice. Never play with vengeance : it is no toy, it brings no joy, it only brings unwarranted death and unrighteous action that prompts the desire and the will to resist, to righteously defend oneself. Then it is a vicious circle going down into hell.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Rating: 
Summary: Darkly Done
Review: Worth it for the Jack Nitzsche score alone
Rating:
Summary: just awful
Review: Wow. This film is pure drivel. What an utter mess. How humiliating for the actors. What was Sean Penn thinking? Why was this film ever made?
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