Film

While watching this drama about a grieving woman and a death-row inmate, we kept wondering why Driver is so game to be an emotional punching bag for our pleasure. As the story toggles between the present and past, and between prisoner Saul (Renner) preparing to die and working mom Ana (Driver) trying to keep ADHD-afflicted son (Coleman) out of special-ed classes, it’s clear that their lives will collide (or perhaps we should say Crash?). No matter how much Oliver’s screenplay jumbles the chronology, you won’t be long in working out who does what to whom. After that, you can sit back and observe Oliver imagine new ways for his characters to suffer.

Driver may have been drawn to the script for the dramatic challenges; every scene offers a new variety of pain and suffering for her character. She has to deal with the pity of a school principal, the emotional detachment of her husband, the agony of going to see an execution and on and on in scene after scene. Meanwhile, Renner gets to rage at a pastor (Rodriguez) sent to give him spiritual guidance before lethal injection.

Oliver deploys precisely the bleached-color palette and the keening musical score you might expect if you have even a passing familiarity with any film about grieving parents. But if you’ve seen any of them, you can skip this.