This mystical drama from director Peter Weir would be a fairly amorphous exploration of spirituality and faith if it wasn’t for the real presence of grief at its core. Jeff Bridges stars as Max Klein, a plane-crash survivor who believes the experience has made him an invincible guardian angel of sorts. Suddenly disinterested in his wife and son, Max wanders about tempting fate (walking into traffic, tiptoeing at the edge of rooftops) and meeting with fellow survivors to debate their place in the universe and the existence of God. In addition to Bridges – whose hazy, empathetic bearing brings to mind another angel movie, Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire – Fearless boasts a riveting supporting cast: Isabella Rossellini as Max’s wife, whose belief in their marriage helps rescue him from the brink; Rosie Perez as a fellow survivor, who seeks a punishing sort of comfort in her Catholicism; and John Turturro as the psychologist trying to bring them back to planet Earth. Fearless benefits from Weir’s eye for the otherworldly – especially in the opening scene, set in the immediate aftermath of the crash – but it’s the sense of sadness that gives the movie its backbone. Max falling to the ground with the weeping wife of his business partner, who died in the accident; Perez’s Carla coming to terms with the way her young son was killed in the crash. These scenes give Fearless its desperate center and anchor the fumbling for enlightenment with which it’s mostly concerned.
