The screenplay was actually co-written by Director Terry George and the man who wrote the book (his name escapes me right now).  In the book, the role that Linda plays ("Grandmother" is how she's credited in the movie but her name is Beth in the book) is not huge, but certainly much larger than in the movie.  I don't even understand why they put the character in the movie if they were not going to use her in any way other than to show the audience that the little boy that was killed had a grandmother.  The opportunity was there.  There was a scene where Linda's daughter, played by Jennifer Connolly, was losin' it in the kitchen while Joaquin was tryin' to calm her down, Linda and granddaughter Elle Fanning came running and Linda kinda told Joaquin to take the granddaughter while she followed her daughter around the corner.  AND THAT WAS IT!!  I thought, okay, now we are gonna see the good stuff.  And when it wasn't there, I thought, okay, maybe it ended up as a deleted scene.  NUTTIN'!!!  Excuse me, Terry George, but you have Linda Dano right there!  She CAN do this!!  Her daughter's heart is ripped out ~ the scene is already set up!  Write a subsequent scene or at least put in the one from the book.  Or have the daughter tell her mother to leave her alone ~ just have them have at least one LINE together.  I just wanted to have one really good scene of mother and daughter together.  Linda & Jennifer would have ROCKED.