Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) is a successful dentist running a thriving practice deep in the heart of Manhattan. Yet he is not happy. Worse, he can’t really pinpoint why. Somehow, having a loving wife, Janeane (Jada Pinkett Smith), and two lovely daughters isn’t enough. He feels smothered, and whether it is his partner’s jumping down his throat over every little thing or Janeane going out of her way to micromanage everything they do Alan’s just about at the end of his rope.

Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler) is in even worse shape. Once upon a time, he had a thriving dental practice, a beautiful wife and a family the envy of all around him. But five years ago on 9/11 all that changed, and ever since Charlie has closed himself off from the world and retreated into a finely structured life of his own design. He’s not so much a mess as he is a ghost, an invisible wanderer drifting here and there oblivious to any and all around him.

Former college roommates, these two men meet by chance amidst the hustle and bustle of New York City streets, rekindling a relationship neither man knew they needed. But this is a pivotal moment in both of their lives, one colored by heartbreak, indecision, angst and worry, and together they might just find a way to stroll again upright along the path of life.

Reign Over Me is an unqualified triumph for writer-director Mike Binder (The Upside of Anger) and actors Sandler and Cheadle. This is, without question, one of 2007’s first truly great motion pictures. Moving, eloquent, sad, ebullient and pulsing with life’s crazy idiosyncrasies, the film is a song, not to grief, loss or painful mourning, but to friendship. These two men find a connection that attempts to lift them out of their collective doldrums, the ability to sit down and confess the best and the worst of themselves to a caring ear enough to help each realize things just might get better after all.

In the film’s production notes, Binder claims he wanted Reign Over Me (the title inspired by a song by The Who) to have, “a kind of joyous pain,” and that statement is absolutely as perfect an encapsulation of my feelings for it as any I could dream up myself. This film hurts, its sorrow palpable and all-encompassing. But its bliss is just as omnipresent, Charlie and Alan finding something within one another that’s as fantastic and moving as any stereotypical love story.

Yet the film is so much more than this description. Binder deals with Charlie’s posttraumatic stress as openly, as honestly and as brutally as that found in after-war pictures like Born of the Fourth of July or The Best Years of Our Lives. More, I cannot remember when I have seen a film deal with the ins and outs of the mental health profession, or what being in therapy actually encompasses, as this one does. Having once worked in the industry myself for a few years I know of which I speak on this subject, and to say the filmmaker nails the profession brilliantly borders on being an understatement.

Reading all of this you could be forgiven if all this makes the movie sound a bit dour and didactic. Please know this is decidedly not the case. Reign Over Me isn’t just entertaining, it’s damn entertaining, the film making me laugh longer, cry harder and smile brighter than just about anything else I’ve seen this year. The supporting players, most notably Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler (who is delicately splendid) and Donald Sutherland, are by and large exemplary, while Rolfe Kent’s (Thank You for Smoking) score and Binder’s use of classic rock music are both fiercely integral to the picture’s success.

As for the leads, I almost don’t have words to express how great the two of them are here. Not that this should come as much of a surprise in the case of Cheadle. After Devil in a Blue Dress, Bulworth, Ocean’s 11, Traffic and his Oscar-nominated turn in Hotel Rwanda it is clear this is one man capable of excellence no matter what the genre. And that holds true this time out, too, Cheadle’s performance as strong and as passionate as any he has ever given.

Sandler, on the other had, is the surprise. Sure, he’s delivered a great performance in the past, but to my eye it looked like his turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love was the fluke and his tepidly obnoxious work in Waterboy, Big Daddy and Click were the unbearably awful norm. Flat-out, fans of those pictures are not going to know what to make of their hero here because this is a Sandler we have never seen before. What he does is beyond magnificent. In fact, he’s so good here he’s Oscar-worthy, and if there were ever two words I never thought I’d utter in connection to the actor those were probably the ones.

But the best character here might just be the city of New York herself. Binder uses the Big Apple masterfully, weaving in and out of sections of the town very seldom seen by those of us who don’t live there. Many films have taken this All-American locale and made it come alive (Woody Allen, anyone?), but few can do so without resorting to cliché. This filmmaker refuses to go to that well, looking into corners and windows allowing the metropolitan locale come to life like almost never before.

I have to admit, much like Binder’s other features there are a few things to nitpick about. Saffron Burrows is as beautiful as ever, but her turn as a slightly unhinged dental patient feels forced and haphazard. It doesn’t help that the character is nothing more than a device, a happy coincidence needed to move things in a new direction during the final act. The whole thing with her makes little sense and is more than a bit dippy, poor Burrows trapped behind a façade that’s as blank as the expression she’s forced to wear for the majority of the film.

There’s plenty else to be annoyed with here, not the least of which is the director’s insistence to put himself into his own pictures, but in all honesty I don’t care about any of them enough to point them out here. This is a great movie, a truly magnificent experience that took me on a roller coaster ride of emotional electricity that sent me out of the theater both exhausted and elated. No two ways about it, if Binder keeps making movies as marvelous as this one he can reign over me as much as he likes.

Film Rating: êêê1/2  (out of 4)