Fearless

Jeff Bridges and Rosie Perez star as plane-crash survivorsthe first made ecstatic by the experience, the second shattered by the loss of her baby sonwho try to make sense of their lives afterward, in a rather confused film adapted by Rafael Yglesias from his own novel and directed by the once interesting (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Witness) but increasingly fatuous (Dead Poets Society, Green Card) Peter Weir. Though Bridges and Perez both do fine work playing characters in a state of shock, their efforts are largely wasted on a story that has trouble keeping its priorities straight; because we never get a sense of what Bridges was like before the accident it’s impossible to interpret his behavior afterward in a meaningful way, and what begins as a provocative narrative teaser never adds up to anything coherent. Isabella Rossellini does what she can (very little) as Bridges’s wife, while Tom Hulce does a satiric turn as a wrongful-death lawyer and John Turturro plays an airline therapist specializing in posttraumatic stress who’s alternately dopey and competent. (JR)

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