Brian Burke (David Duchovny) is dead, murdered trying to stop a parking lot beating. His wife Audrey (Halle Berry) is devastated, but due to the fact she has two children who need their mother she doesn’t have the privilege of being able to fall to pieces. Instead she must hold it together, keep things going and try to make everything okay for her kids, because if she isn’t able to do that then it will be three lives shattered and not just her own.

Benicio Del Toro and Halle Berry in Dreamworks Pictures' Things We Lost in the Fire

Jerry Sunborne (Benicio Del Toro) considered Brian his best friend, maybe even his only friend. The one-time Seattle lawyer has fallen onto hard time thanks to his battles with drug abuse, his inability to kick his heroin habit grinding his life to an utter standstill. With Brian gone, he’s decided that if this man, this hero, could believe in him then it is high time he started trying to do the same, and while kicking substance abuse won’t be easy it’s still something he’s definitely got to do.

Audrey and Jerry never really got along, the former not understanding why her husband had so much faith in the junkie and the latter feeling it best for him to just stay out of her way and not rock the boat. Yet now with Brian gone, both find that they are in desperate need of the other, in need of that emotional crutch that might just be the thing that can help them get through the day. It’s not going to be perfect and their relationship is certainly unconventional but it does fee like its helping, both finding a strength to carry on neither new they possessed.

Academy Award-nominated director Susanne Bier (After the Wedding, Brothers) makes her Hollywood debut with the heart-stopping and sensational Thing We Lost in the Fire, an uncompromising melodrama dealing with loss, grief, friendship and addiction that completely blew me away. This is a movie that, as it grew and evolved, just gets better and better as it goes along, freshman screenwriter Alan Loeb’s explosively emotional story moving me to tears time and time again.

As good as this is, I still can’t help but wonder how it would have all turned out without Del Toro. The man is magnificent here, easily delivering one of the single best performances I have seen this year. Jerry goes through an astonishing transition, all of it registered in the actor’s expressive facial features with a subtle grace that’s truly breathtaking. As good as he’s been (winning an Oscar for Traffic) this might just be the best I’ve ever seen the actor, Del Toro simply beyond breathtaking in this role.

For me, he is the movie. Berry is fine, easily the best she’s been since Monster's Ball, but I can’t exactly say she’s exceptional by any stretch of the imagination. Don’t get me wrong, the actress is very good here; she just isn’t as compelling a presence as Del Toro, the same going for costars Duchovny, John Carroll Lynch and Alison Lohman. All of them are fine, but when the film focuses only on them it tends to slow to a bit of a halt, only picking back up the emotional steam when it turns its attention back to Jerry.

Meanwhile, as for Bier she brings her trademark reserve and observational brilliance to the picture, telling things with an almost documentary-like straightforwardness that only amplifies the story’s inherent drama. The director never overdoes it, never pushes things into a maudlin state of saccharine melancholy, instead allowing for people and their actions to speak for themselves in a way that’s doesn’t preach or force a certain perspective. This is a movie that allows audiences to make up their own minds about what both Audrey and Jerry do, their final victories ones which could be colored in many thousands of directions depending upon a viewer’s personal point of view. 

In the end, I find myself echoing a bit of Brian’s philosophies on life where it comes to this picture. “Accept the good,” is something he says and it is a sentiment that is bandied around a little bit as the characters in the story work and hug and cry and scream and love and, most of all, try to find away to embrace it. Well, Things We Lost in the Fire isn’t just good it’s great, and as far as Hollywood is concerned that’s something I’ll accept any old day.

Film Rating: êêê1/2  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  Things We Lost in the Fire Theatrical Trailer