Things We Lost in the Fire

As I said here recently, any Susanne Bier film is worth watching, but this one was strangely overlooked last year, despite strong work from Oscar-winners Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro. She is the wife and he is the best friend of David Duchovny, all-round good guy who is murdered while trying to save a damsel in distress. Plus there are a couple of cute kids in a designer house, so it could have been very Movie of the Week, but the importation of Danish director Bier again keeps the suds astringent and the tears relatively authentic. The survivors’ stories are believably complicated. Benicio acts up a storm as a formerly-successful drug addict trying to reform after the death of his one enduring friend; Halle can’t keep up, but her beauty is highly watchable even when she’s looking drawn and grim. I suppose it depends on how much grief and recovery you can stand in your movies, but this one is more than pathetic -- it’s sympathetic. (2007, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-63.)