The Crossing Guard (1995)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Lady D

  
  A film I?ve been wanting to see for a while but perhaps my expectations were set too high. The story was slow moving. The performances were average and iddn?t really come up a level even towards the end. True story????

• Anthony L

  
  Sean Penn is as good a director as he is an actor. Jack Nicholson & David Morse are fantastic in this powerful and touching drama!

• Jon L

  
  Great casting/acting. Good story idea but could probably have been executed better.

• Dean M

  
  Just fine drama of a jeweler is shredded by grief after his young daughter is killed by a drunk driver. He resolutely tells his estranged wife that he plans to shoot the culprit now that he has been released from prison. It's an unpleasant but riveting story about strained moral… More
  Just fine drama of a jeweler is shredded by grief after his young daughter is killed by a drunk driver. He resolutely tells his estranged wife that he plans to shoot the culprit now that he has been released from prison. It's an unpleasant but riveting story about strained moral responsibility, the licking of emotional wounds, the contradictions of masculinity, and the tragic cracks into which whole families can tumble.

• xGary X

  
  Intersting character driven study of loss and guilt that contains some quality performances, but ultimately it's too slow-moving.

• Walter M

  
  [color=dimgray]Note to future filmmakers: never start your movie with a scene in a stripclub. It has a sleazy, 3:00 am HBO sort of feel to it.(Not that I would know anything about that...) Case in point: "The Crossing Guard" starts that way and it is a bad start for the… More
  [color=dimgray]Note to future filmmakers: never start your movie with a scene in a stripclub. It has a sleazy, 3:00 am HBO sort of feel to it.(Not that I would know anything about that...) Case in point: "The Crossing Guard" starts that way and it is a bad start for the movie because it definitely sets the wrong mood.(Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall "Exotica" starts out in customs in an airport.) Now I know Freddy(Jack Nicholson, in full psycho mode) is a complete mess and only has social interaction with the fellow denizens of said club. He is completely unable to come to terms with the death of his daughter six years ago killed by a drunk driver, John Booth(David Morse, in a very good performance), while Freddy's ex-wife(Anjelica Huston) is slowly rebuilding her life. Freddy finds out that John Booth has just been released from prison and plans to kill him. But Freddy is such a screw-up that he forgets the ammunition for his gun. He swears to return in three days time. Now, that is how the movie should start; it should not be thirty minutes in. There is a lot of "The Crossing Guard" which is unnecessary and a good deal of it is overwrought and overdone even if it is well-meaning.[/color] [color=#696969][/color] [color=#696969]Note 1: Morse and John Savage were both in Inside Moves(1979). Morse's character here also might share an unpleasant event with his character from St. Elsewhere.[/color] [color=#696969][/color] [color=#696969]Note 2: Director Sean Penn dedicates the movie to Henry Charles Bukowsky.[/color] [color=#696969][/color] [color=#696969]Note 3: In The Crossing Guard, Mikey & Nicky and The Woodsman, I have been noticing that the only characters who ride city buses are either criminals or ex-cons.[/color]

• Jeffrey M

  
  The Crossing Guard is a drama that flirts with misery porn, but overcomes it with a powerful and authentic performance by Jack Nicholson. While it's not always clear what Sean Penn, the director, is trying to convey, he succeeds in offering a complex revenge/family drama. The… More
  The Crossing Guard is a drama that flirts with misery porn, but overcomes it with a powerful and authentic performance by Jack Nicholson. While it's not always clear what Sean Penn, the director, is trying to convey, he succeeds in offering a complex revenge/family drama. The ending, to be sure, didn't fit the story, but enough is right (especially Nicholson and Morse) to make it worth a watch, especially for Sean Penn fans.

• Ivan D

  
  Moody, dark, but very enlightening and touching in the end. Jack Nicholson gave a very emotionally detached and vulnerable performance, far from majority of the characters he always play. David Morse was also good, and so was Anjelica Huston and Robin Wright Penn, but the film overall… More
  Moody, dark, but very enlightening and touching in the end. Jack Nicholson gave a very emotionally detached and vulnerable performance, far from majority of the characters he always play. David Morse was also good, and so was Anjelica Huston and Robin Wright Penn, but the film overall was just okay, but still a worthy directorial effort by Sean Penn.

Read all 8 featured audience ratings