MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Silent Fall’ Doesn’t Rise Beyond So-So

In “Silent Fall,” the only apparent eyewitness to a double homicide is the wealthy victims’ 9-year-old autistic son, Tim (Ben Faulkner). The boy is traumatized twice over--his closed-off condition prevents him from even expressing his grief.

What lifts the movie above its standard murder mystery trappings is the way it attempts to get inside the boy’s misery anyway. Psychiatrist Jake Rainer (Richard Dreyfuss), a specialist in autism, takes Tim on as a patient in an attempt to ward off a more severe drug therapy administered at the behest of the Baltimore police force. He’s gentle with the boy, but he also knows he’s on a deadline: If he can’t force out the identity of the killer, then Tim may as well be dead too.

It’s a so-so thriller with a first-rate atmosphere. Director Bruce Beresford is working from a by-the-book script by Akiva Goldsman that piles up the preposterousness. As a murder mystery it’s schematic and too easy to figure out--the pool of potential murderers is too small and the clues are as heavy as anvils. As a psychological study it’s uneven: Jake feels he was once responsible for the death of an autistic boy in his practice and so his relationship with Tim is supposed to be mutually healing.

It’s a touchy-feely premise that only works because of Dreyfuss’ performance, and even Dreyfuss can’t do much with the scenes between Jake and his scowling, suffering wife (Linda Hamilton), who gets to show her displeasure by gutting chickens for dinner. She urges him so many times to “push” his emotions that we begin to wonder: Could Jake be pregnant? Is this some sort of new Lamaze procedure for uncommunicative hubbies?

Tim’s older sister, Sylvie (Liv Tyler), claims to have witnessed the aftermath of the murder, though not the killer’s face, and her reasoned calm with Tim rings true. She has the practiced ease of someone who is prepared for all the boy’s fearful contingencies. (That’s what links her with Jake.) When she’s with Tim, his fear subsides, and yet there’s something creepy in the way they shield each other from abuse. When they fall asleep together on the floor of the murder site, it’s a horrific frieze--babes in arms in hell.

Beresford overrides the script’s overemphatic clunkiness by drawing out the story’s more ambiguous meanings. Tim doesn’t speak in his own voice, when he speaks at all. Instead, he mimics exactly the voices of TV pitchmen, family--anybody. Jake tries to get him to re-create the voices during the murder, and the scenes in which the boy calmly and emphatically spews out the victims’ cries is genuinely upsetting. Beresford avoids turning Tim into a demon seed; little Ben Faulkner has a plangent, innocent quality that makes his agonies palpable (even though the boy has blocked his own pain). Tim isn’t Rainboy--he’s never perceived as any kind of savant.

It’s rare for a thriller to be as evocative as “Silent Fall” without delivering the goods. Perhaps the reason the film is more of a letdown than the average misfired mystery is because, in places, the psychological details in the scenes between Jake and Tim are so good. Dreyfuss shows us the little boy Jake still has tucked inside himself. But he doesn’t go elfin on us. He’s a man grappling with inchoate feelings. Beresford would have done better to jettison the thriller stuff and hunker down with the doctor-child relationship.

The film’s unevenness suggests Beresford probably felt the same way.

* MPAA rating: R, for language and a murder scene. Times guidelines: It includes a boy spouting obscenities and several murderous moments.

‘Silent Fall’

Richard Dreyfuss: Jake Rainer

Liv Tyler: Sylvie Warden

J.T. Walsh: Sheriff Rivers

John Lithgow: Dr. Harlinger

A James G. Robinson presentation of a Morgan Creek production, released by Warner Bros. Director Bruce Beresford. Producers James G. Robinson. Executive producer Gary Barber. Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman. Cinematographer Peter James. Editor Ian Crafford. Costumes Colleen Kelsall. Music Stewart Copeland. Production design John Stoddart. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.