The Crossing Guard (1995)

Plot: After his daughter died in a hit and run, Freddy Gale (Jack Nicholson) has waited six years for John Booth (David Morse), the man responsible, to be released from prison. On the day of release, Gale visits Booth and announces that he will kill him in 3 days.
John Booth uses his time to try and make peace with himself and his entourage, and even finds romance with Jojo (Robin Wright).

Director: Sean Penn

Writing Credits: Sean Penn

Cast: Jack Nicholson, David Morse, Robin Wright, Anjelica Huston, Piper Laurie, Richard Bradford, Priscilla Barnes, David Baerwald, John Savage, Kari Wuhrer, Joe Viterelli, Eileen Ryan, Leo Penn, & Erin Dignam

Music by: Jack Nitzsche

Genre: Drama/ Thriller

Budget: $9,000,000

Filming Dates: 12 January 1994 – 24 March 1994

Filming Locations: Los Angeles, California, USA

MPAA Rating: Rated R for sexuality and strong language.

Release Date: 16 November 1995

Runtime: 111 minutes

Robin Wright as Jojo

Jojo (Robin Wright) is a gentle flame in the darkness of ‘The Crossing Guard’. She’s a free-spirited, bohemian artist whose presence offers a delicate counterpoint to the film’s pervasive atmosphere of sorrow, guilt, and vengeance.

Jojo lives simply, surrounded by her art and the gentle chaos of her creative world. Her lifestyle reflects not detachment, but deep sensitivity. She is warm, introspective, and emotionally intuitive. Her open heart allows her to engage with others without judgment, and she seems to intuitively understand the unspoken wounds people carry.

She moves through the film like a whisper of light, neither loud nor insistent, but undeniably present. Her world is one of quiet healing, where pain is not erased but softened by compassion.

This becomes especially evident in her brief but meaningful romance with John Booth (David Morse), a man haunted by the past. Having served time for the accidental killing of a young girl while driving drunk, John is a man consumed by guilt. But Jojo sees beyond the headlines of his crime. She sees the man he has become, the remorse, the fragility, the desperate search for peace. In Jojo, John finds not absolution, but understanding. She offers him a moment of grace, a pause from self-loathing.

But Jojo is not naive. She feels the storm brewing around them, especially as Freddy Gale (Jack Nicholson), the father of the girl John killed, spirals deeper into obsession and rage.

Robin Wright portrays Jojo with breathtaking subtlety. She doesn’t command attention with dramatic monologues or explosive emotion. Instead, her power lies in her stillness, her glances, her listening. She embodies a woman who has known pain but has chosen to meet the world with gentleness rather than anger. Wright’s performance is laced with both tenderness and melancholy, crafting a character who is as emotionally rich as she is elusive.

Jojo remains one of the emotional heartbeats of ‘The Crossing Guard’, not because she resolves the central conflict, but because she reminds us that even amid devastation, there can be moments of quiet understanding. She is the artist of the soul, painting solace into a world drenched in grief.

In a film about the inability to move on, Jojo represents the fragile hope that perhaps, one day, we can.