Reign Over Me

Seeing Adam Sandler with a Bob Dylan perm, riding a motorized scooter through the streets of Manhattan while blasting The Who, is an image that stays with you. It’s jarring, not because it’s inherently funny—though, in any other Sandler movie, it would be—but because of the vacant, thousand-yard stare behind the sunglasses. I remember watching this for the first time on a scratched DVD I’d rented from a Blockbuster that was literally in the middle of a "Going Out of Business" sale, and I actually dropped a full slice of pepperoni pizza on my lap during the kitchen monologue. The grease stain never came out, but neither did the memory of this performance.

Reign Over Me arrived in 2007, a time when Hollywood was finally starting to untangle the knot of 9/11 trauma through personal stories rather than just political thrillers or heroic biopics. It’s a film that has largely slipped through the cracks of the 2000s, perhaps because people didn't know what to do with a movie where the guy from Billy Madison breaks your heart into a dozen jagged pieces.

The Perm and the Pain

The story follows Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle), a successful dentist who seems to have the "perfect" life: a beautiful wife (Jada Pinkett Smith), a thriving practice, and a nice apartment. But Alan is suffocating under the weight of his own routines and the subtle isolation of his marriage. One night, he spots his old college roommate, Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler), zipping through traffic. Charlie lost his wife and daughters on 9/11 and has essentially hit "factory reset" on his brain. He doesn't hold a job, he remodels his kitchen incessantly, and he spends his nights playing video games.

The chemistry between Cheadle and Sandler is the engine that keeps this from becoming a Lifetime movie. Don Cheadle, who was already a legend by this point after Hotel Rwanda and Crash, plays the "straight man" with a restless energy that makes you realize he needs Charlie just as much as Charlie needs him. Watching them interact is a lesson in nuance; Sandler is playing a man who has retreated into a shell of 1970s rock and adolescent hobbies to keep the "ghosts" at bay. It’s a performance of terrifying stillness punctuated by bursts of explosive, ugly grief. To be honest, Sandler’s wig looks like a poodle that lost a fight with a toaster, but once the movie starts, you stop seeing the hair and start seeing the hollowed-out human underneath.

Shadow of the Colossus

One of the most fascinating "era-specific" choices director Mike Binder (who also plays the somewhat sleazy friend/lawyer Bryan Sugarman) made was Charlie’s obsession with the PlayStation 2 game Shadow of the Colossus. In 2007, the "video games are art" debate was just heating up, and seeing a major Hollywood drama use a game as a central metaphor for grief was groundbreaking. Charlie spends his hours wandering a digital wasteland, hunting giants that represent the insurmountable obstacles of his own life. It’s a brilliant, wordless way to show his internal state without relying on clunky dialogue.

The film also features an incredible supporting cast that feels like a snapshot of mid-aughts prestige. Liv Tyler plays Angela, a psychiatrist who treats Charlie with a gentleness that avoids the usual "magic therapist" tropes. Meanwhile, Donald Sutherland shows up as a judge in a late-film courtroom sequence, reminding us why he was the king of gravitas. Even Saffron Burrows pops up in a strange, slightly uncomfortable subplot as a patient of Alan’s who tries to seduce him. Some of these B-plots feel a bit cluttered—a common trait of Mike Binder films—but they contribute to the feeling that New York is a city overflowing with people who are all dealing with their own private disasters.

A Relic of a Raw Era

Looking back, Reign Over Me feels like a time capsule of a specific New York mood. It’s shot by Russ T. Alsobrook with a crisp, digital clarity that captures the transition from the grit of the 90s to the polished, glass-and-steel city of the 2010s. It was a modest production, costing about $20 million and barely making that back at the box office. I suspect it vanished because it’s a "quiet" movie that asks for a lot of emotional labor from its audience. It’s not an easy watch, and it doesn't offer the tidy, cathartic ending that studio executives usually demand.

The film’s soundtrack is also worth a mention. The cover of "Love, Reign O'er Me" by Pearl Jam is essentially the soul of the movie. Apparently, Sandler was the one who reached out to Eddie Vedder to get the track done after a screening, and it fits the film’s rainy, brooding atmosphere perfectly. It’s these small, authentic touches—the specific records, the obsession with kitchen tiles, the way Charlie wears headphones to block out the world—that make the drama feel earned rather than forced. This is a movie that treats grief like a messy roommate who refuses to move out, rather than a plot point to be solved by the third act.

Reign Over Me isn't a perfect film; it's occasionally overlong and some of the subplots involving Alan’s practice feel like they belong in a different movie. However, as a character study and a snapshot of a city trying to find its footing after an unthinkable tragedy, it’s deeply moving. If you’ve only ever seen Adam Sandler shouting in a waterboy accent, you owe it to yourself to see what he’s capable of when he stops trying to be funny. It’s a hidden gem from the mid-2000s that deserves a spot in your "recent classics" rotation—just watch out for the pizza on your lap.