Grace Is Gone

Starring: Nathan Adloff, Heather O. Craig, John Cusack, Doug Dearth, Michael Thomas Dunn

Directed by: James C. Strauss

RS: 3of 4 Stars

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Simplicity -- four-square, not sappy -- is rare in film. James C. Strouse had it in his script for Lonesome Jim. As writer and first-time director, he gives Grace Is Gonethe quiet power to sneak up and floor you. A reserved father (John Cusack in a devastating change of pace) drives his young daughters, the wondrous Shelan O'Keefe and Gracie Bednarczyk, to a Florida theme park, unable to find words to tell them that their soldier mom has been killed in Iraq. That's it. No politics, no pleading. No artifice.