[usr 4]
After escaping a setup, a dying hitman returns to his hometown of Galveston where he plans his revenge.
Ben Foster plays Roy Cady, who’s a rugged enforcer for a repugnant small-time New Orleans gangster (played by Beau Bridges with perfect sleaze). In the opening scene, he is told by a doctor that he has lung cancer and can’t say how long he has left to live. After the soul-shaking diagnosis, Roy is tasked with threatening a local lawyer and told to not bring a gun. After a riveting double cross and rescue, Roy and a 19-year-old call girl named Rocky (Elle Fanning) go on the run. Rocky asks him to make a pit stop at a trailer park and after a startling gunshot, she emerges with her 3-year-old sister. The unorthodox trio decides to hole up in a quaint motel in the titular town of Galveston, Texas.
If you’ve read my prior review of “Leave No Trace,” you’ll know that Ben Foster is one of my favorite actors. He’s uncanny in his ability to make pain and torment explosive yet understated. Elle Fanning continues to successfully navigate mature material. Rocky is a sad but resilient character, although she needs saving in the beginning, she’s not a damsel in distress. She’s akin to Foster’s character, a victim of her circumstances, but doing what she can to survive.
Nic Pizzolatto, who wrote the brilliant anthology series “True Detective,” adapts his own novel, screenwriting under a pseudonym. While I enjoyed the novel, he really tightens the material and drops the voiceover narrative. Pizzolatto hails from New Orleans and thus has a great attention to the minutiae of criminal activities around the Gulf Coast.
I love that it’s directed by the excellent French Actress Mèlanie Laurent. She brings a calculated nuance that is flourishing in European crime films but feels lacking in most Hollywood productions. She keeps tight close-ups during the action which makes the violence and thrills much more visceral. More importantly, the dialogue feels real and when characters converse, the camera lays back and lets them talk, diminishing any hand-holding of audiences’ attention spans. The lovely color schemes are heavy on electric greens, inky blacks, and deep blues, making a cinematic treat for the eyes. Laurent and cinematographer Arnaud Potier are really in tune, making the South look so unique and, at times, foreign. Some frames keep replaying in my mind, particularly Roy’s trailer shot, stunningly in a quiet swamp, almost as if it’s on the edge of a prehistoric world. I hope more directors and storytellers take note of the right way to capture a gloomy yet cleansing crime tale.
Available on Blu-ray & DVD Tuesday, December 11th
