The Weinstein Company presents Grace is Gone, directed by James C. Strouse and starring John Cusack as Stanley Phillips. It introduces Shélan O'Keefe as Heidi and Gracie Bednarczyk as Dawn, the Phillips' two daughters. Original music is by Clint Eastwood. The film runs 90 minutes.
This is the story of a man whose wife is a soldier killed in Iraq. Stanley cannot face telling his two daughters, Heidi, twelve and a half, and Dawn, eight, the news of the death of their mother. Instead, he takes them on a road trip of distractions – away from the military base community where everyone else knows the sad news.
The film has a pretty solid plot given the unpredictable behavior of people dealing with the grief of losing a loved one. It is well shot and nicely edited with smooth cuts that leave almost no continuity questions. A good deal of time is spent in the family SUV and at times, it seems that Cusack takes his eyes off the road a little too long.
Grace is Gone spends time letting us get to know the three main characters. Shélan O'Keefe, in a fantastic performance, steals the show in her role as Heidi – a girl on the verge of adolescence. When this road trip is proposed, she is suspicious that something is wrong, but the little girl in her goes with the excitement of a trip to a beloved theme park in Florida. As time passes, we see Stanley’s panic over the situation grow and his grief deepen. Heidi, while looking forward to fun at the theme park, grows ever more suspicious about what her father is hiding. In the last few minutes, we see the scene that we know has been coming from the beginning – Stanley tells Heidi and Dawn the tragic news – and it hits them, and the audience, very hard. This film is effective because of the strong performances by O'Keefe and Cusack and the way the story pulls us into the lives of the characters.