John Cusack is determined to excise every ounce of his screen charisma in this independent drama about a husband and father of two young girls whose wife dies fighting in Iraq. Cusack gives a mewling performance as Stanley Phillips, a slouching retail manager with oversized glasses and averting eyes. Stanley is so downtrodden and morose that his body seems to hold no bones. He literally droops. So does the movie. Grace is Gone wants to be a personal portrait of grief and an oblique anti-war statement, but both aims wilt in the light of Cusack’s anti-star turn. He makes such a scene not showing off that he’s distracting.
