"Moonlight Mile" is a film inspired by the murder of Rebecca Schaeffer...but only broadly. This is because the director/writer Brad Silberling had been dating Schaeffer when she died and like the character played by Jake Gyllenhaal, he lived for a time with her parents following this death.

When the story begins, you might find it confusing. Joe's girlfriend had been killed....though this isn't obvious and when you find out, exactly how seems pretty vague as well. What is clear is that Joe (Gyllenhaal) is living with her parents (Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon) and he seems like he's simply going about his life in order to make them happy...sort of like a substitute for his dead fiancee. What's next? See the film.

Considering the film is about a family and boyfriend responding to the the brutal murder of a girl, it obviously is NOT a fun movie to watch. But the performances are very good and the film is unique....reasons to possibly watch it. Well made...and rather unpleasant...though fortunately the film is NOT violent and doesn't show any violence.

Waitress Diana Floss was killed by a husband who came to the diner to kill his wife. Mona Camp (Holly Hunter) is the prosecutor. Diana's fiancé Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal) is staying with her parents Ben (Dustin Hoffman) and Jojo (Susan Sarandon) who still treats him as their own son. He feels obligated to stay which includes going along with Ben's plan of him being in the family commercial realty business. He falls for Bertie Knox (Ellen Pompeo) but they both have secrets of their own.

It's a movie about a lot of suffering but mostly done quietly. Everybody is getting crushed but nobody is particularly interested to admit it. It has the air of truth. However it isn't able to squeeze emotions out of the audience. We get to witness their suffering without really feeling it. Most of the performances are great. Gyllenhaal does a terrific job bringing life to the emotional dialog which could have gone another way.

One of those well-intentioned, star-studded duds which fade fast despite getting a full endorsement from "Entertainment Tonight". Quirky married couple grieves in different ways over the murder of their daughter, while their once-future son-in-law, living with the mercurial twosome since the tragedy, feels the agreeable pull of family yet harbors a guilty secret. Only in a few sequences does the director get a rhythm going (all of them scored, rather curiously, to rock tunes from the '70s such as T.Rex's "20th Century Boy"!). Apparently the impetus of this script was based on fact, but these characters (cutesy in their conversations, sneaking cigarettes and digging up flossy bits of colorful memory) resemble nobody, living or dead. This is the kind of movie where there are two main characters named Joe, the son-in-law and the wife (Jo, for Josephine). There's also a ready-made follow-up girlfriend for Jake Gyllenhaal (who lets his round eyes do most of his acting; smiling and muttering while feigning sensitivity or callow humor). Dustin Hoffman comes off the best with a loose performance, but poor Susan Sarandon, acting like a benumbed former-hippie, has the very worst scenes (she even gets to drop in a line about being a Democrat; are all Democrats 50-ish flower children?). Lazy, dim and uncharismatic, "Moonlight Mile" doesn't go the distance. *1/2 from ****