An apolitical blacklisted screenwriter (Jim Carrey, pining after the Oscar that got away) hits the road to nowhere, drives off a bridge into the river, knocks his head, and wakes up on the beach with amnesia, right outside a California town where he happens to be a dead ringer for a WWII casualty -- son of the local theater owner -- whose body happened never to be found. Talk about convenient! After that, it's a soggy slog through lost-love tearjerking, postwar flag-waving, anti-McCarthy piety, nostalgia for small towns and old movies and neon. Sort of a chopped salad of Hail the Conquering Hero, The Return of Martin Guerre, Guilty by Suspicion, Cinema Paradiso, and (explicitly) The Life of Emile Zola. The man with two false fronts -- neither a commie nor a war hero -- is buried in false sentiment. Director Frank Darabont's only degree of restraint (there's no quota on nose-to-the-screen closeups) is to cut it half an hour shorter than the three hours of his Green Mile. With Martin Landau, Laurie Holden, David Ogden Stiers, James Whitmore, Bob Balaban, Ron Rifkin. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd
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