For those skeptical of an Adam Sandler drama about the events of September 11, 2001 (and who wouldn’t be?), be warned: If you’ve seen “Punch Drunk Love” or “Spanglish” and didn’t buy Mr. Sandler displaying his serious side, or if you’ve been wary of September 11 films from the beginning, “Reign Over Me” is not the film to alter your tastes.

That said, if you’re a New Yorker who feels as if so many of the softer, subtler, understated stories of 9/11 have been pushed aside in favor of heart-stopping reenactments of attacks, jingoistic calls to arms, and casual references in daily political debates, here’s a story (finally) that cuts a different path and engages a different conversation.

“Reign Over Me” is the first 9/11 film about life rather than death, about a city that is vibrant rather than at a standstill, about healing rather than hurting. More specifically, it is about the wounds of Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler), a broken man whose voice is frail and tepid, whose temper flares with talk of the past, and who rides a scooter through the darkened late-night streets of New York alone, turning up his iPod as he blots out the world. He is at once surrounded by the nation’s biggest city and completely isolated, a sole silhouette skirting through an abandoned city still asleep.

Charlie is spotted one day on one of his rare, daytime outings by Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle), Charlie’s old dental school roommate who today cares for his wife (Jada Pinkett Smith) and two young daughters by managing a successful dental practice that offers aesthetic enhancements to up-scale clients. Stuck in gridlock, Alan calls out to Charlie, who can’t hear him over the blare of his headphones. That night, Alan mentions to his family that he saw his old college bud.

The same Charlie who lost his family in an airplane crash, his daughter asks? Yes, that Charlie — and yes, that airplane crash.

Alan seems like a bit of a lost soul himself, suffocated by his marriage, trapped in a job he sees little real value in. When Alan escapes from the house one night to take his daughter to a sleepover, he sees Charlie again and all but tackles his old friend to get him to stop.

As the two sip coffee, it doesn’t take long for the dentist to realize how far this widower has fallen. The two don’t so much chat as sit next to each other. Charlie is quiet and disheveled. He claims not to remember Alan or dental school, and halfway through their talk he puts the headphones back on and ignores Alan as he hums along.

Alan doesn’t ask about September 11, Charlie doesn’t offer. And the drama of the film is waiting for his release — for the full emotional weight of his loss to be unleashed.

As the two men slowly start to become friends — playing video games in Charlie’s dark living room, chatting in Alan’s office, and taking scooter rides through Midtown Manhattan — a casualness evolves between them that slowly allows Alan to broach the suspect, suggest therapy, and walk with Charlie along the difficult road of remembering, confronting, and healing.

Not that it’s always easy. Charlie repeatedly loses control in outbursts of rage. It’s much the same reaction he’s had to his in-laws, who Charlie has all but eliminated from his life, and with a therapist (Liv Tyler) who starts asking the questions he doesn’t want to hear.

Despite occasional melodrama, “Reign Over Me” is a moving act of empathy, fueled primarily by Mr. Sandler in a brave and affecting departure from the immature antics that made him famous. Emotional and vulnerable, he explores the depths of Charlie’s despair and anger in such long, unbroken scenes that we start to lose sight of “Happy Gilmore” and begin to appreciate the heartaches of a seemingly real man who has suffered a real loss.

What some will find frustrating is this film’s lack of focus — how it tries to clutter Charlie’s story with subplots about Alan’s family life, a potential sexual harassment suit, a landlady, Charlie’s in-laws — even a potential romance. It’s too much filler around the story we really want to see.

But in a few fascinating moments, director Mike Binder (“The Upside of Anger”) hints at a larger story playing out beyond the simple mechanics of a buddy film. As Charlie endlessly scoots around Manhattan, cruising from 72nd Street down to West 4th Street, he conspicuously avoids ground zero. Late in the film, when Charlie starts to emerge from his self-imposed co coon and flips on the television, he is dismayed by what he sees. On one channel is news of a New York City terror alert; on another is an image of Iraqi riots. He keeps flipping until he finds a classic black-and white film and turns up the volume

In this quiet, almost unnoticeable one-two punch, Mr. Binder suggests something profound: In mourning the slice of New York that’s been obliterated, we’ve lost sight of the thriving city all around us that continues to march forward and in focusing on our fear, we’ve lost sight of the humanity at the center of September 11. Charlie doesn’t mourn down at the World Trade Center site, but he seems drawn to the streets that are alive with the hustle and bustle, and he doesn’t want revenge, but merely some way to balance his remembrance of the past with his embracing of the future.

So sure, given its heavy-handed tone and its cluttered horizon, “Reign Over Me” is a tricky film to defend. But it’s the first of its kind — the first movie brave enough to address in the public sphere what it so valiantly strives to say.

As such, it’s an even trickier film to dismiss.