A missing girl and interlocking lives

A missing girl and interlocking lives

A suspect is Beckworth (Greg Germann), a neighbor; he’s questioned and released when one of the girl’s hairs turns up in his car. Among the many curious is Carter (Mark Kelly), a schoolteacher who we follow home. He offers us a brief portrait of a video game addict, who basically spends his entire weekend playing a game, sometimes taking off his headphones to follow the story on TV. The city knows about Beckworth but only we know about Carter: Are we supposed to be getting an inkling here?

Many other stories interlock. Their connections would be difficult to explain, but let me describe them. Erik Palladino plays Jerry, a rookie cop whose own child has died.

Dane Cook plays a therapist whose marriage is in trouble and who is having an affair with a musician (Aja Volkman). He spends much time dolefully trying to watch the clock and produce sperm samples for wife Kate (Elizabeth Mitchell).

We meet Allegra (Kali Hawk), an African-American writer on a sitcom, whose secret is “I hate black people.” Not much of a secret because she has a history of confiding it pretty much everyone she meets. Hating other black people seems to be her biggest problem but it looks like she has another related problem: She takes perverse pleasure telling that to people. It gets resolved for her in sort of scene where she makes nice with two black men she had been cool toward which was meant as heartwarming moment leading into uplifting conclusion but felt contrived and awkward.

One of the most poignant characters is Drew (Miranda Bailey), who cares for her brother, Erik (Vincent Ventresca). He’s paralyzed and apparently brain dead; we flash back to learn that she was driving drunk when he was injured in accident. Late in the film, she straps him into racing chair and pushes him in “SoCal Marathon,” race he once ran able-bodied.

Her insistence that they must finish the race becomes a key theme. And my problem, which I know sounds heartless: What does it mean to him if they finish? For herself, it may be penance, and indeed she may deserve it. But how is this supposed to work as amends when he has no idea what’s happening?

Now you’re probably wondering how Drew and Erik fit into story of kidnapped girl. They don’t really although we can trace remote plot connection. That’s an issue with this genre. The interlocking stories are theoretically about people whose lives are connected; that worked in “Crash.” Here the connections seem less immediate and significant, so that at times the movie seems based on unrelated group of short stories. Which was the approach that worked for Robert Altman with Raymond Carver’s stories in “Short Cuts.”

At the end there’s a scene that brings together three major characters, but this scene relies entirely on action that could fit into many movies and works on its own terms but is convenient rather than particularly revealing about those people. So while well-made and acted film lacks gathering power of others I have mentioned.

Watch A missing girl and interlocking lives For Free On Gomovies.