Surprise at end cheapens school-shooting drama

MOVIE REVIEW

"The Life Before Her Eyes"

Grade: B-

Starring Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood. Directed by Vadim Perelman. Rated R (violence, adult situations and teen substance abuse). At Landmark's Midtown Art Cinema. 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Bottom line: In aftermath of a school shooting ... a cheap-trick ending.

The stories of school shootings are far too common now, so common that even their aftermath has taken on a numb predictability. The round-the-clock cable coverage of the creepy killer. The makeshift memorials of flowers and teddy bears. The quiet arrival of grief counselors.

But what happens then?

What do the survivors face, five or 10 years later? What kind of guilt do they carry, for not being one of the fallen young? What sort of post-traumatic stress do they live with, as adults? These are the questions that the absorbing drama "The Life Before Her Eyes" tries to answer.

Until, abruptly, it doesn't.

A promising movie derailed by a third-act twist, "Life" is the story of Maureen and Diana, two mismatched friends —- "the virgin and the whore," the bad-news Diana calls them —- who are close in the way that only high school girls can be. They share their troubles, they sneak away for swims, they wonder when their lives are really going to begin.

Until one day a mad boy with a gun threatens to end them, then and there.

Skip ahead 15 years. Diana —- once Evan Rachel Wood —- is now grown, married, a mother, and Uma Thurman. Her wild times long behind her, she's trying to live the life she once thought was beyond reach, driving her daughter to Catholic school, planting flowers in her garden, teaching art at a local college.

Until the anniversary of the shooting rolls around again, and begins drawing her back into the past.

Despite a few pesky errors —- including the fact that Wood and Thurman look nothing like each other —- the movie develops a sneaky narrative pull as it time shifts between Diana's teenage wildness and adult angst. We see why Diana dreamed so hard of a life beyond her awful boyfriend and petty drug busts. We understand why she's so determined to hold on to it, even as the past threatens to swamp her in flashbacks and dread.

Wood is quite good as the young Diana, although the role is a step back after "Across the Universe" —- she's a skilled young actress, but she needs to shake off the angel-faced tramp parts before they type her permanently. Eva Amurri, who has the saucer eyes of her mother, Susan Sarandon, gives Maureen a believably spiritual side, and Thurman is properly jittery and anxious as Diana's haunted adult self.

And then, in its last five minutes, the movie finally plays the trick it's been holding back, breathlessly.

Unfortunately, it is just that —- a trick, and a cheap one at that. It's also, as gimmicks go, a self-defeating one. Because if this isn't a story about survivor's guilt, what is it, and why have we been watching?