Sections

Questions plague Streep's latest

Rosellen Brown's bestseller deserves more.

Her novel captures the struggle of an ordinary family and the murder that threatens to tear them apart. And unfortunately, director Barbet Schroeder's big-screen version of "Before and After" can't do the same.

Carolyn, a doctor, and Ben Ryan, an artist, are your average parents. Mom comes home from the office each day to Dad and their kids, Jacob and Judith. All four sit around the dinner table and discuss their problems -- Mom had a headache at work that day, Dad couldn't come up with an idea for his sculpture, 17-year-old Jacob got a C on his algebra test and Judith got in a fight with her friends at recess.

One day, their lives just stop moving. Martha Taverner, a girl in town, is found face down in the snow, dead. After her death, both Carolyn and Ben find out that, not only was Jacob dating her, but he was also the last to be seen with her, making him the key suspect in her murder.

Jacob runs away from home and Carolyn and Ben must look beyond everything they know to find the truth. In the process, both parents must make their own decisions on how they might save their son.

"Before and After" should have all the key elements that constitute a successful movie -- an unpredictable plot, a psychologically disturbing storyline and a cast that includes Meryl Streep, Liam Neeson and Edward Furlong. After all, what more could anyone want?

We still need more. The story certainly is a good one -- when it's in Brown's novel. When on the screen, however, a potentially incredible tale becomes, at best, pure blah. Extended pauses between characters' dialogue, their over-dramatized pain, a completely random sex scene and the addition of the jail and court scenes are all to blame for the film's downfall. Everything is overdone: The characters' motives become false, and we are left in our own struggle to understand them.

Rosellen Brown tells it better. Her words invite us to understand their struggle: In the novel, it's not about the jailhouse, the court scenes and Jacob's running away. Instead, in Brown's story, the questions posed are what make it so utterly powerful. Here, we have an average all-American family -- a loving mother, father, sister ... and a son who might be a cold-blooded killer. As an audience, we are forced to hear their side of the story, not the victim's.

With whom are we supposed to side? Are the other townspeople justified in their abhorrence of the entire Ryan family? Should Carolyn and Ben side with their son? If they do, will they go about defending him in the same way? In the book, these questions are endless.

And the main questions, sadly enough, in the audience members' minds are not these, but rather: "Is this movie going to be over soon?" "What's the point?" or "If I go to the bathroom now, will the people in the aisle seats be angry that they have to stand up?"

These questions, we might guess, were not what Brown intended us to ask.

Performances by Neeson and Streep, although powerful, do nothing to help the plot.

Neeson's Ben becomes a beast the second he finds out about the murder. Driven by love and anger, he destroys evidence to protect his son. Unfortunately the loving aspect of his character becomes lost in the harshness of his initial reactions. As a result, we are not entirely clear how we should perceive him.

Streep, however, is wonderful as Carolyn Ryan. Although she understands her husband's suffering, she cannot understand the way in which he decides to protect their son. She wants to fight for Jake the right way. Streep makes sure we understand the motives that drive her character.

Edward Furlong ("Terminator 2") is perfect as the soft-spoken Jacob Ryan. After he decides to speak (Furlong goes silent for the first half of the film, spending all his time in his treehouse by himself), we find out that he, in fact, has the most meaningful lines in the movie. Only one minor question might bother us about him: What the hell is a 17-year-old boy doing in a TREEHOUSE? Isn't he past that age?

After two hours, the movie turns into sentimental fluff, leaving those of us who have read the book feeling a little bit cheated. In a jailhouse scene near the end of the film, the entire Ryan family hugs, kisses and makes-up in a matter of moments. We wonder, what happened to the torn, struggling family? Why did I just sit through this poor film?