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Love, Simon (2018)

23 Saturday Jun 2018

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D: Greg Berlanti / 110m

Cast: Nick Robinson, Jennifer Garner, Josh Duhamel, Katherine Langford, Alexandra Shipp, Logan Miller, Keiynan Lonsdale, Jorge Lendeborg Jr, Talitha Eliana Bateman, Tony Hale, Natasha Rothwell, Miles Heizer

Simon Spier (Robinson) is in high school. He has three best friends – Leah (Langford), Abby (Shipp), and Nick (Lendeborg Jr) – loving parents (Garner, Duhamel), a kid sister, Nora (Bateman), whose culinary efforts he praises whether they’re good or (usually) bad, an interest in drama, and a big secret: he’s gay. Being a teenager, of course, nobody knows that he’s gay, but when Leah tells him that another pupil at their high school has come out anonymously online, Simon begins talking to him via e-mail. Soon, he and “Blue” are exchanging their mutual thoughts and feelings on their personal circumstances. When another pupil, Martin (Miller), discovers Simon’s e-mails, he uses them to blackmail Simon into helping him get together with Abby. Afraid of being outed, Simon does his best to set them up with each other, while also trying to bring Nick and Leah together (because Nick is attracted to Abby). But his attempts at matchmaking backfire, and Martin does what Simon has feared all along: he outs Simon to the entire school…

Widely touted as the first movie by a major Hollywood studio to focus on a gay teenage romance (and it’s only taken until 2018 to happen – way to go, 20th Century Fox), Love, Simon is a tender, heartfelt, and overwhelmingly sweet movie based on the novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. It features a good central performance by Robinson as the modest but likeable Simon, and it hits all the right notes in its attempts to focus on his struggle to deal with the implications of being gay, the fear of being outed, and what it means to have to protect that knowledge. And yet, once Simon’s secret is revealed to one and all, what has been a confidently handled, and sincerely expressed story – with a nice mystery sideline in trying to work out Blue’s identity – suddenly becomes an unexpected fantasy based somewhere between the world of John Hughes’ teen dramas and a return trip to the Land of Oz. All along, Simon has been dreading everyone finding out that he’s gay, and it’s at this point in the movie where you could be forgiven for thinking that things will start to get really difficult for him.

Au contraire, mon ami. Aside from a (very) brief moment of uninspired, and childish, leg-pulling (bullying is really too strong a word for it), the only other fallout from Simon’s outing is the decision of his three best friends to avoid him – he did manipulate them after all. Otherwise, his family prove to be mega-supportive, his teachers express zero tolerance for any homophobic behaviour by the other students, Martin apologises to him while admitting his own insecurities, and when Simon challenges Blue to meet him at an upcoming carnival, what seems to be the whole high school turns out to be there for them (oh, and his friends forgive him as well). Now, there’s nothing wrong with a happy ending, but this is like something out of the Thirties and early Forties when happy endings were guaranteed (back then it might have been called Andy Hardy Comes Out… of the Barn). If the movie’s message – coming out is easy-peasy – is intentional, then that’s fair enough, it’s still a piece of entertainment, and designed to do well in the mass market. But as a reflection of what is likely to happen in the real world when coming out, then Love, Simon is a far from perfect choice from which to take your cues.

Rating: 7/10 – a wish fulfillment tale that’s breezy and fun but also deliberately anodyne in places, Love, Simon is enjoyable and refreshing for its choice of topic, and benefits from good performances throughout – Rothwell’s drama teacher with attitude is a highlight – as well as Berlanti’s sensitive direction; becoming an entirely different movie altogether once Simon is outed, though, undermines the character’s emotional struggle, and paints first gay love in such rainbow-like colours that any real sense of drama is abandoned altogether.

The Show (2017)

10 Sunday Dec 2017

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Original title: This Is Your Death

D: Giancarlo Esposito / 105m

Cast: Josh Duhamel, Giancarlo Esposito, Famke Janssen, Caitlin FitzGerald, Sarah Wayne Callies, Chris Ellis, Lucia Walters, Brooke Warrington, Jaeden Noel

The rise and rise and continued rise of reality TV shows has, according to the latest movie to feature James Franco in an “anyone could have played it” cameo, brought us to a bit of an impasse. With audiences (apparently) becoming bored with watching the lives of celebrities, would-be celebrities and those looking for love, what’s a television network to do when their latest hit show, Marriage to a Millionaire, ends in murder and suicide? For the show’s host, Adam Rogers (Duhamel), it proves to be a bit of a wake up call. For network chief Ilana Katz (Janssen), it provides an opportunity to create a brand new show unlike any seen before on national TV. Ilana wants to make a show that features ordinary members of the public killing themselves live on television. At first, Adam is repulsed by the idea, as is the live event producer, Sylvia (FitzGerald), that Ilana wants to hire. But Adam convinces himself that the show doesn’t have to be as tawdry or exploitative as it sounds. Instead, he believes the deaths can have meaning, and he comes up with an idea that facilitates this: the death of each person who takes part will be financially beneficial to someone in their lives…

It’s a measure of The Show‘s innate stupidity as a movie that this notion – and all by itself – doesn’t derail things from the moment the idea is mentioned. It’s certainly the moment when the movie gives up all attempts at credibility, and settles for being an unadulterated mess. As Adam demands more and more creative control (and gets it), his insistence that the show is “real” (whatever that means), and is helping people to see that their lives can make a difference, becomes more and more nonsensical as the movie progresses. Both Adam and the script – the work of Kenny Yakkel and Noah Pink – become less and less convincing as the show, titled This Is Your Death, becomes a ratings winner, and any initial horror or disgust is conveniently overlooked. Behind the scenes, Sylvia acts as the show’s voice of conscience, but her objections to the show’s format and content is continually undermined by her remaining as the producer. Away from the show, the only other voice of dissent is provided by Adam’s sister, Karina (Callies), a nurse who quickly points out the immorality of what her brother is doing. But Adam doesn’t want to listen because Adam has his own agenda.

The movie tries to keep several plot strands going all at the same time, but while some of those strands are pursued to the end, there are just as many that are maintained in such a haphazard fashion that they add to the sense that nobody working on this movie had a clear idea as to what it was actually about. Anyone looking for a movie that supports the idea of dignity through suicide will find the televised versions shown here abhorrent, while anyone looking for a cogent and thoughtful examination of what it means to sacrifice yourself for the good of your loved ones, will come away perplexed by the simplistic and lunk-headed approach that’s adopted by Yakkel and Pink’s unimpressive screenplay. There are themes and issues raised that the movie could have addressed more directly, such as the audience’s complicity in people’s deaths, and the need for each death to be as violent as possible (when someone takes their life by lethal injection, it’s something of a relief).

But the movie is trying to be a thriller first and foremost, even though at best it’s a muddled drama that seeks to hurl contentious barbs at our obsession with reality television, and to a lesser extent, social media. Some of this is addressed through the character of Ilana, who wants only for the show to be successful, and who is willing to look the other way when circumstances dictate. But the character is an easy target, the network executive without a conscience, and though Janssen is a talented actress, there’s nothing she can do with the role because Ilana is a caricature without any substance. Then there’s Adam himself, increasingly arrogant, increasingly self-aggrandising, and only interested in what benefits the show can give him, from national fame on a whole different level to what he’s experienced before, to a new house that is way too big for just one person. The script tries to make it seem that Adam truly believes in what the show is trying to do, but whenever it tries to get him to explain his beliefs, they remain as unconvincing as the show as a whole.

Away from the studio, the movie offers us two stories, the one that relates to Karina and her efforts to remain clean from drugs (and which you know is going to collide with the show at some stage), and the efforts of a fifty-something ex-salesman, Mason Washington (Esposito), and his efforts to keep a roof over the heads of himself and his family. Mason is working two jobs when we first meet him, but inevitably he loses both thanks to Basic Plotting 101, and when he can’t find any alternative work (and even gets turned down by a loan shark; yes, a loan shark whose conscience works better than anyone on the show), Mason begins to think about trading his life for his family’s future security. He’s the emotional core of the movie, someone we can care about and hope doesn’t kill himself, and thanks to Esposito’s sympathetic portrayal, that’s easily done. But Esposito the director still has the issue of connecting what’s essentially a character drama (Mason’s trouble finding a job etc.) with a low-concept reality TV-based thriller. Sadly, the two don’t mix as well as intended.

The performances are consistent with the lack of consistency in the narrative, and the likes of Callies, FitzGerald, and Janssen can only do so much to ensure their characters aren’t completely stereotypical. But while Esposito makes it work, Duhamel isn’t so lucky, and as he showed in Misconduct (2016), when the character isn’t fully there, he’s not always able to build on what’s available and create a compelling portrayal. Duhamel is a likeable actor, but in this kind of movie and in this kind of role, he often seems out of his depth, and he struggles accordingly. By the end of the movie, and a scene set outside the studio, the limitations of his performance are on full display (though he’s not helped by Esposito’s clumsy direction; watch Esposito exit the scene as Mason to see just how clumsy Esposito’s direction can be). With so much that doesn’t work, or is simply under-developed, the movie coasts along trying to be relevant and/or insightful, but instead, falls down at every turn, and relies too heavily on dramatic clichés to ever achieve anything that isn’t superficial or half-baked.

Rating: 3/10 – as ideas go, it’s not a bad one, but the treatment is what keeps The Show from being anything other than a jumbled, unconvincing, and embarrassing farrago; another example of a movie that feels as if everyone is working from a first draft, it plays out like a bad dream that you hope you’ll be able to forget, but which lingers in the memory just a little too long for comfort.

Spaceman (2016)

23 Tuesday Aug 2016

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Spaceman

D: Brett Rapkin / 90m

Cast: Josh Duhamel, W. Earl Brown, Winter Ave Zoli, Ernie Hudson, Carlos Leal, Caroline Aaron, Claude Duhamel, Stefan Rollins, Wallace Langham

If you’ve heard of Bill Lee, one-time pitcher (and a left-handed pitcher at that) for the Boston Red Sox and the Montreal Expos, then chances are you also know about his drug-related background, his independence and need to challenge authority, plus his support for Maoist China, Greenpeace and school busing in Boston (amongst others). He was a well-known counterculture figure who appeared in an issue of the pro-marijuana magazine, High Times, and who once threatened to bite off the ear of an umpire in a 1975 World Series game. In later life, while still involved with baseball on a variety of levels, he was also asked to run for President of the United States on behalf of the Rhinoceros Party (his slogan: “No guns, no butter. Both can kill.”) If nothing else, Bill Lee has led an extraordinarily rich and eventful life.

Which makes Spaceman all the more confusing for focusing on the period that immediately follows the end of his professional career. Fired for one challenge to authority too many (walking out before a game in protest at the release of a fellow player), Lee (Duhamel) expects to get right back in the game, so confident is he that his unique skills as a pitcher will be more than enough to offset his off-the-pitch behaviour. But when the offers don’t come rolling in, Lee finds himself at a loss. His agent (and friend), Dick Dennis (Brown), keeps getting the runaround when he tries to contact the big league teams, and soon the message gets through: nobody wants him because everyone is tired of his shenanigans. He’s also thirty-six, and time isn’t on his side.

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Lee’s also trying to do right by his three kids. He’s separated from his wife (Zoli) and can only have them over by arrangement. He’s as unorthodox a parent as he is a baseball player, but his relationships with his children are one of the few aspects of his life that he gets right. Otherwise, Lee smokes a lot of weed, drinks a lot of booze, and dreams of making it back into the Big Leagues. But the offers don’t come, his eventual divorce sees him deprived of any visitation rights, and to cap it all he receives an invitation to play for a Canadian seniors team. Intrigued and offended at the same time, Lee attends one of their matches, and helps them win. His need to play keeps him with the team for a while, until Dennis swings him a tryout for San Fran at their training facility in Phoenix. Lee motors all the way down there, only for the head coach (Langham) to dismiss him, and for Lee to learn that he won’t ever be taken back into the Big Leagues. A coaching offer comes along too, but the lure of playing sees him contemplating returning to Canada and resuming playing in the Seniors’ league.

Director Brett Rapkin has been here before. In 2003, he and fellow movie maker Josh Dixon joined Lee on a trip he was making to Cuba. The resulting footage made up the bulk of the documentary Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey (2006). Ten years on and Rapkin’s decision to revisit Lee’s life (or at least a part of it) has led to his making a movie that starts off strong with Lee’s determination to stand up for his teammate, but then it settles into an amiable groove that is pleasant to watch but eventually becomes so placid that not even the scene where he loses his visitation rights scores any dramatic depth.

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By focusing on a period when Lee wasn’t playing baseball, it seems that Rapkin (who also wrote the screenplay) has chosen to explore the nature of the man behind the legend. But when the man is the legend, there’s little room for any real exploration, and so we have several moments where Lee informs anyone who’ll listen that he needs to play baseball, several scenes where Lee mooches around at home in his Y-fronts, and even more scenes set in a bar where he squanders his time in playing the wounded, unappreciated hero. With the introduction of the Canadian seniors team, the movie does find something more interesting to focus on, but even then it continues to be more amiable than sharply detailed.

As the Spaceman, Duhamel makes up for his appearance in the dreadful Misconduct (2016) by infusing Lee with a great deal of charm and affability. The employment of a scruffy beard adds to the character, while his scenes with Zoli reveal the pain Lee is suffering at the collapse of his marriage (something that didn’t happen in real life). But on the whole, Duhamel has little to work with, and while he’s able to give a warm, occasionally disarming performance, he’s too confined by the conventional nature of the material and the flatly handled narrative. The supporting cast have even less to hang a performance on, with only Zoli making any kind of impression, playing Lee’s wife with a brittle dismay that seems all too appropriate.

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While the movie as a whole is affectionate in its view of Lee and his anti-establishment outbursts, and his self-aggrandising, it does make an effort to remind viewers that for all his grandstanding he was an exceptional pitcher. At the San Fran tryouts, and before he’s sent on his way, Lee’s gift with a baseball is used to outclass an arrogant batsman, a scene that trades on an overly familiar scenario in sports movies while doing so with a valid sincerity (look closely at any shots of Lee pitching though and you’ll see that the shot has been reversed; Duhamel isn’t a leftie). Sadly, there are too few scenes of Lee doing what he did best, but thankfully, when there are they lift the movie out of the doldrums.

Rating: 5/10 – not a bad movie per se, but one that never aspires to be anything more than good-natured, Spaceman struggles to find any dramatic traction that might keep an audience from losing interest; ultimately, Rapkin’s debut feature shows him working at a purposely even keel and forgetting to add some highs and lows to give texture to his otherwise genial look at a baseball hero and his fall from the Big Leagues.

Misconduct (2016)

06 Saturday Feb 2016

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Misconduct

D: Shintaro Shimasawa / 106m

Cast: Josh Duhamel, Alice Eve, Anthony Hopkins, Al Pacino, Malin Akerman, Byung-hun Lee, Julia Stiles, Glen Powell, Marcus Lyle Brown

Released as a Lionsgate Premiere (rough translation: not good enough to be shown in cinemas), Misconduct is an early contender for Worst Movie of 2016. It’s ostensibly a thriller but veers off in so many different directions in an effort to be interesting that in the end it’s just a jumbled mess. There’s not even the germ of a good idea here, the script by Simon Boyes and Adam Mason resorting to cliché after cliché and line after line of awful dialogue in its efforts to appear somehow less than the sum of its parts (or the parts of its sum even).

It’s a movie where everybody is up to no good. Sadly, the audience knows this right from the start, so any “revelations” or twists and turns have the effect of inducing a headache rather than any surprises. The storyline tries to be convoluted in an attempt to mystify anyone unfortunate enough to watch Misconduct, and the basic plot – Hopkins’ pharmaceutical CO is accused of deliberately falsifying bad test results – struggles even to be relevant within the movie’s own structure. Once a badly attached blackmail plot is added to the mix, it gives the movie carte blanche to be as stupid as it wants, a move it takes full advantage of.

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As well as the blackmail plot – instigated by Hopkins’ unbalanced girlfriend (played by Akerman) and involving Duhamel’s ambitious attorney – Misconduct features a dire attempt at adding depth to two of the characters’ lives, Duhamel and his moody, depressed wife Eve, by having them recovering from the loss of a child during pregnancy. Why this subplot is even present is a mystery the movie never answers, along with the presence of Lee as a corporate-sponsored assassin who for some inexplicable reason is dying from some unstated disease (again you have to ask yourself why any of this has been included).

There’s more, but as the movie continues piling absurdity on top of absurdity, the unlucky viewer will find themselves wondering if this is intended more as a parody than a thriller, and will be laughing accordingly, but if it is then no one informed the cast, who struggle through scene after scene with resolutely straight faces and a grim determination to get through it all and reach the end with a degree of integrity still intact. Duhamel is a capable actor, but here he’s as wooden as a fence post and spends most of his screen time looking petulant, or as if there’s a bad smell under his nose (there is, and it’s coming from the script). Matching him for petulance, and using staring off into space a lot as a character trait, Eve gives probably the worst performance of her career so far, as she tries to distance herself from everyone and everything connected with the movie.

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Akerman is a poor femme fatale, her attempt to seduce Duhamel having all the allure of a drunken one-night stand with someone you hope doesn’t give you their number the next morning. As mentioned above, Lee is the assassin who’s close to death, and he sleepwalks through his role making supposedly “deep” comments and trying to appear above it all by refusing to acknowledge that this is one acting gig his agent should be apologising for profusely. And then there’s Stiles, an actress who really should be given better roles than the one she has here, a Kidnap and Response expert who gets to shout at Hopkins a lot and look suitably badass (and that’s basically it).

You get the picture: Misconduct has its fair share of bad performances to match its bad script and wayward direction – Shimasawa, making his first feature, gives an approximation of what a director should be doing – but then there’s Hopkins and Pacino, two Oscar winners now content (like De Niro) to throw away their talent and make terrible movie after terrible movie. Hopkins has the larger amount of screen time, but phones in his performance, and falls back on the kind of aloof, manipulative, all-knowing characterisation he’s played way too often in recent years. When you’ve got Hopkins in a movie and he’s playing a powerful businessman you just know in advance that he’s not going to be putting much effort in, and that’s exactly the case here. Amazingly though, Pacino is worse, his law firm boss coming across as a pale imitation of his role in The Devil’s Advocate (1997). He’s also upstaged by his own hair, which in one scene, looks like the worst comb-back in history. Why either of them took on their roles is the one abiding mystery the movie cannot solve.

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From starting out as a legal thriller – you get the idea the movie might just be about bringing Hopkins’ fraudulent CO to justice, and the hunt for the evidence to prove his negligence – it soon descends into a welter of murder and violence and betrayal on all sides, as the script decides it needs to be more punchy than in its earlier scenes. It leads to one of the movie’s more absurd scenes where Duhamel, having gouged his stomach escaping from the police, buys some glue in a convenience store and uses it to close his wound. And of course, he then runs around as if it had never happened. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

There is an attempt at providing a central murder mystery to keep the audience intrigued, but regular viewers of this kind of movie will spot the culprit from a mile off. But this is in keeping with the movie’s inability to come up with anything new or unpredictable, and again, regular viewers of this kind of star-happy dross will have resigned themselves to the movie’s inevitable outcome(s) long before they reach the end. The makers probably didn’t intend the title Misconduct to be so relevant to its own content and execution, but in one respect they can be applauded: they made sure the movie certainly lived up to it.

Rating: 3/10 – with only its standard, by-the-numbers production effort propping it up in the ratings stakes, Misconduct is a woeful, massively disappointing movie that falls down each and every time it tries to be interesting; with awful dialogue and some truly atrocious performances, it’s a movie that defies explanation as to its existence, and ranks as one of the worst “corporate/legal thrillers” in recent memory.

You’re Not You (2014)

27 Friday Mar 2015

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You're Not You

D: George C. Wolfe / 102m

Cast: Hilary Swank, Emmy Rossum, Josh Duhamel, Stephanie Beatriz, Jason Ritter, Julian McMahon, Frances Fisher, Marcia Gay Harden, Ali Larter, Andrea Savage, Loretta Devine, Ernie Hudson, Ed Begley Jr

Kate (Swank) is a successful classical pianist who begins to experience muscle spasms in her hands that affect her playing. Eighteen months later, Kate has been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and needs daily personal care. With her regular caregiver having left, Kate is being looked after by her husband, Evan (Duhamel), but he works full-time and is unable to look after her during the day. Kate makes arrangements to interview a replacement caregiver. The first interviewee is Bec (Rossum), a college student who, despite her lack of experience, makes enough of an impression on Kate to be hired. And despite a first day that goes less than smoothly, and against Evan’s objections, Kate determines that Bec should continue as her caregiver.

While Bec and Kate get used to each other and develop a bond, they also learn that Evan has had a short affair with one of the women in his office. It leads to Kate feeling that she’s holding Evan back; she tries to get Bec to take her to an assisted living facility but Bec refuses to go through with the visit and instead they go to Evan’s office where Kate tells him she wants a divorce. Meanwhile, Bec has relationship problems of her own: she’s been sleeping with one of her tutors, Liam (MacMahon), but while she wants to end things, he doesn’t. And she’s attracted the interest of a young man named Wil (Ritter), who she believes is too nice for her.

Kate and Bec meet another couple where the wife has ALS, Marilyn (Devine) and John (Hudson). Their positive attitude and obvious love for each other give Kate the boost she needs to deal with her illness more effectively and she becomes more outgoing; she even allows Evan to express his feelings and regrets to her. At Xmas, Bec’s parents pay a visit, but a heated conversation between Bec and her mother (Harden) has Kate feeling that she’s holding Bec back from living her own life. Consequently, she fires Bec and arranges for her mother, Gwen (Fisher) to look after her. When Kate’s breathing becomes so bad she ends up hospitalised, Gwen wants her to be put on a ventilator but it’s revealed that Kate has given Bec authority to make any medical decisions relating to treatment or care. Knowing that being on a ventilator isn’t what Kate wants, and against Gwen and Evan’s wishes, she takes Kate home…

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Adapted from the novel by Michelle Wildgen, You’re Not You provides pretty much everything you could ever want from a movie trying its very best to make having a debilitating disease seem not so bad. This type of movie – or indeed any type of movie where the protagonist faces a difficult personal battle – always strives to “accentuate the positive”, making the illness/life changing event/seemingly insurmountable problem/horrible setback the trigger that allows the affected character to display resilience and fortitude in the face of such a terrible obstacle. It’s wish fulfilment on an adversarial basis, where triumph of the will trumps, if only temporarily, the problem that can’t be beaten (or which will require a high level of personal sacrifice). And so it proves, with Swank’s ALS sufferer fighting her husband’s selfishness, her dwindling social status, her own growing physical disablement, and a script that coats everything with the rosy glow of female empowerment.

This is a movie that ticks all the boxes. Main character shows stubborn attitude to dealing with illness? Check. Secondary main character shows increased ability to deal with own issues as a result of spending time with main character? Check. Family and friends of main character show complete lack of understanding re: issue main character is dealing with? Check. Main character has “dark moment” where suicide seems like an attractive option? Check. These and more pop up throughout the movie, making it seem like a “greatest hits” disease movie, rather than the heartfelt drama it wants to be.

What doesn’t help as well is that we never really get to know Kate as a person. Sure, she’s an accomplished pianist, and sure she’s bright and funny in the way that accomplished people are, and sure she appears to have reconciled herself to the eventual outcome having ALS dictates, but all this has happened before Bec comes on the scene. Swank is an accomplished actress but even she struggles to make Kate more than a cypher to hang an illness on. And when her speech necessarily worsens, Kate – and Swank – becomes even less of a presence in the movie. Thanks to Jordan Roberts and Shana Feste’s superficial screenplay, there’s no real depth that allows Swank to adequately portray anything like the absolute terror someone must feel as their body slowly but surely shuts down. All we’re left with is a selection of expressions that show patient acceptance or occasional, brief disappointment.

Rossum fares better, but that’s because she has more screen time (and not because Bec’s problems are any more interesting than Kate’s), while Duhamel flits in and out of the narrative as the penitent Evan, looking sheepish and lost for the most part, and blander than a beige throw rug. The rest of the cast come and go without making much of an impact, and as we head toward the inevitable outcome, emotions rise to a level where heartstrings are plucked to predictable effect but still without any depth behind them. Wolfe – making only his second feature – adopts a slightly diffident, low key approach to the material that keeps the audience from getting too involved, and which stops the movie from being as dramatic as it should be. Ultimately, it’s a movie that flirts with the tragedy of Kate’s dilemma without fully embracing it.

Rating: 5/10 – too derivative of every other “disease of the week” movie, You’re Not You struggles to attain any dramatic traction, and wastes the talents of its star; a so-so attempt that is likely to leave viewers wondering how patient they have to be before they’ll be able to connect with the storyline.

Scenic Route (2013)

30 Wednesday Oct 2013

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Scenic Route

aka Wrecked

D: Kevin Goetz, Michael Goetz / 87m

Cast: Josh Duhamel, Dan Fogler, Christie Burson, Miracle Laurie

When two friends, Mitchell (Duhamel) and Carter (Fogler), take a road trip together and the truck they’re in breaks down, the stage is set for a tense battle of wills – first against each other, and then against the elements as they fight to survive being stranded in the desert.

Taking the basic premise that these two long-time friends are both failing in their lives and their ambitions, and are equally embittered, Scenic Route wastes no time in peeling back the layers of each character and showing them for the disillusioned, desperate people they are. Mitchell is trapped in a marriage he feels obliged to continue with, while Carter is homeless and failing to get his writing career off the ground. Both men are unable to break the chains they have wrapped around themselves. As they argue and fight over their respective failures – each summing up the other’s deficiencies – their arguments spiral out of control and become violent. To make matters worse, the stretch of road they’re on is miles from anywhere, and there’s almost no traffic.

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On the whole, Scenic Route is a tense, involving movie that fares better than perhaps it should. Kyle Killen’s script is punctuated by the kind of smart one-liners that nobody in this kind of situation would come up with – the two men’s initial exchanges are needlessly verbose – and one or two plot developments (which I won’t spoil here) smack of convenience rather than organic advancement. What saves the day is the committed performances of Duhamel and Fogler. Duhamel gets an extreme makeover that looks odd at first but then really suits his character, while Fogler displays a depth and range that hasn’t been evident from his comic performances. This is a tough, physical movie (shot in Death Valley) and neither actor outshines the other, making this a movie about two men who begin as equals, struggle to maintain that equality and then who learn how to survive by fighting for each other.

Aside from the 1998 short Mass Transit, Kevin and Michael Goetz haven’t directed a movie before, and while this is their first feature, they keep things tightly focused on the truck and its immediate environs, placing an emphasis on keeping Mitchell and Carter in close relation to the vehicle. Even when they move away from the truck the frame remains obstinately restricted in its point of view. There are some long shots but these serve only to highlight how isolated and alone the two men are. The photography by Sean O’Dea emphasises the rugged natural beauty of the surroundings, while editor Kindra Marra ensures each scene is played out to maximum effect, including the extended coda that tries to take the movie into another territory altogether.

The movie does have its faults. Some, as mentioned above, are due to the script and hinge largely on the dialogue. Developments in the plot detract from the straightforward telling of the story – a flashback proves unnecessary and distracting – and the likelihood of the final outcome will always be in doubt. The two men also seem to get by without any food or water for over three days. How much these things will detract from a viewer’s enjoyment of the movie, though, will be down to the individual.

Rating: 7/10 – a modest suspenser/drama that plays well throughout and is bolstered by two above average performances; not as clever as it would like to be, perhaps, but still worth a look.

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