Lullaby

Movie Title--  Lullaby

Release Year--  2014

Running Time--  1 Hour and 57 Minutes

Director--  Andrew Levitas

Cast--  Garrett Hedlund, Amy Adams, Richard Jenkins, Jessica Brown Findlay, Anne Archer, Jessica Barden, Jennifer Hudson, Terrence Howard

A young man that has been estranged from his family returns to his childhood home to learn that his dying father is taking himself off life support within 48 hours.

Jonathon (Garrett Hedlund) has been estranged from his family for years but when he gets news that his father Robert (Richard Jenkins) doesn't have much time left to live, he returns home.  When he arrives home he finds his mother Rachel (Anne Archer) and his father together in the hospital and his father tells him that within 48 hours he is going to be removed from life support.  Jonathon tells his father that he is not going to stay and watch him die and leaves.  He goes to a stairwell and screams to let out his frustration and meets Meredith (Jessica Barden), a 17 year old girl in the advanced stages of bone cancer.  She asks him if he has a cigarette and after they have a smoke together, she tells him where he can find her and steals his lighter.

After talking to Meredith, Jonathon goes back to his father's room.  Soon the youngest member of the family, Karen (Jessica Brown Findlay) arrives and says she has put steps in motion to keep the hospital from helping her father commit assisted suicide.

Over the next 48 hours, a lifetime's worth of drama plays out, setting the family on an unexpected journey of love, forgiveness and laughter and Jonathon once again begins to find his voice through reconciliation his father and reconnecting with his ex love.

Honestly, I thought this was a great film while at the same time it was incredibly sad.  A man, suffering from cancer for 12 years, finally decides he has had enough and is basically committing suicide while his family stands around and watches him die.  How heartbreaking is that?  That would have to be a hard decision to deal with, as the patient and as the family members; as the patient, you would have to be tired of living in such a weak and miserable state and as the family, it would have to be horrible to have to stand by and watch as someone you love so dearly fades away to nothing.  It really is more of a story of forgiveness and redemption for the son and a story about the power of life and death for the viewer.

Garrett Hedlund is just fantastic in this film.  His role as Jonathon has a ton of emotional highs and lows and he plays them as anyone would expect a young man that has to deal with this would.  He starts out so angry and as the film progresses he begins to soften as he watches his father go through the little time he has left.

I will say, if my father were in the hospital and I had to put up with Jennifer Hudson's character, I would have her job.  Jennifer Hudson plays a nurse by the name of Carrie and she is full of attitude from the first second you meet her.  She complains about the people that have come to visit a dying man and at one point when Jonathon asks for help with his father, she tells him he has to wait and then adds, or do it yourself.  If Nurse Carrie were a caretaker in my hospital and I got her as a nurse, she would not have a job very long.  I know that it is just a character and I know that there are some nurses that act that way but they are providing a service to a sick person and I feel like it is disrespectful to act in the manner that this character acted toward a dying man.  Then close to the end, the writers turn her character into a nice, sympathetic character which only made me more angry.  They wrote this character like a bitch the whole film and then suddenly at the end she has a heart?  I HATED Nurse Carrie.

This film was just great.  If you are looking for a good film and don't mind crying a little (I just sobbed at the end), this one is for you.  Watch this one with a box of tissues in hand and Don't Forget the Popcorn!