Moonlight Mile

A family attempts to deal with the emotional impact of an unexpected loss in this emotional drama set in the early 1970s. Diana Floss (Careena Melia) is a woman in her early twenties who is only days away from marrying her boyfriend, Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal), to the delight of her parents, Ben and Jo Jo (Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon). However, Diana finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time when an altercation breaks out in a diner, and she's murdered for no good reason. Ben and Jo Jo are devastated, and they both turn to Joe for comfort, treating him as a member of the family, with Ben offering him a job at his real estate firm and Jo Jo grateful for his company, despite her unflappable surface. Joe also finds himself needing comfort, and he becomes involved with Bertie (Ellen Pompeo), a woman who waits tables at a local watering hole owned by her boyfriend, who has been listed as Missing in Action in Vietnam for the past three years. However, as the wheels of justice slowly turn and the Floss' lawyer, Mona Camp (Holly Hunter), prepares Ben and Jo Jo for the upcoming murder trial, Joe is tortured by a guilty secret -- he and Diana had a falling out, and planned to call off the wedding shortly before her unexpected death. Moonlight Mile was written and directed by Brad Silberling, who has had his own experiences with death and grieving to draw from -- he was dating actress Rebecca Schaeffer when she was murdered by a stalker in 1989.