The latest film releases include Last Breath, My Dead Friend Zoe, Cold Wallet, and The Accidental Getaway Driver. Weighing in are Tim Grierson, senior U.S. critic for Screen International and author of This Is How You Make a Movie, and Katie Walsh, film reviewer for the Tribune News Service and the Los Angeles Times.
Last Breath
This is based on a true story and documentary of deep-sea divers trying to rescue one of their own. It stars Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu.
Grierson: “It's the type of really nice, low-budget survival thriller that doesn't have a lot of frills, and really focuses on the details, not just of how they try to rescue the diver … but also just how the world of deep sea diving works. … The movie very much hits a lot of expected beats for this type of genre, but I think all three of the lead performances are strong enough.”
Walsh: “As a kid, I was really obsessed with survival stories, and so I was reflecting on what it is that makes survival stories so interesting, and I think it is this idea of human endurance and human empathy. And you get a lot of that in this movie that's very systems-oriented, because it's this idea of, okay, the computer system on the ship goes down, what do you do? And then this really highly-trained team has to come in and make decisions that are human oriented, but also weighing all of the risks and benefits of what it means to turn this giant ship around in a storm in the middle of the night in the North Sea, to get this one guy.”
My Dead Friend Zoe
Co-written and directed by Iraq war veteran Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, this is about an Army veteran who returns from war and is haunted by one of her friends who was killed while serving.
Walsh: “It's really a movie about grief, learning to let go of these lost loved ones. … I think it's really interesting to pair Merit, who is the lead character, her PTSD symptoms along with her grandfather's Alzheimer's symptoms. He's also a veteran. And I think it's really beautiful. … If any criticisms I have have of it, it's just that it feels like it pads itself out a little bit, you want to wish it was a little bit tighter in terms of the screenplay. But I think the performances are great, and Natalie Morales is perfect for this wisecracking ghost friend.”
Grierson: “There's a lot that's really affecting in the film. … This filmmaker, this is their feature debut, and they're drawing from their own military service and their own memories. … One of the things that the film does best is really talk about this idea of PTSD, and also talk about the idea of how we as a country have or haven't gotten better over generations in terms of how we deal with our military veterans when they come home. … I think that sometimes the story itself can be a little too easy in terms of how it does certain plot things and plot complications in the film. … We understand from the beginning, because of the title, that Zoe has died, and we don't know exactly what happened to her, that we get hints through flashbacks of what probably happened to Zoe. … While the ending reveal is on one level, quite touching, on another level, I found it a little manipulative in a way that I didn't entirely think works. … That being said … I think [Sonequa] Martin-Green is really, really quite good in this.”
Cold Wallet
This thriller focuses on crypto investors who get screwed over and try to kidnap the person responsible, but end up in a twisted game.
Grierson: “One of the problems with Cold Wallet is that it is a relatively simple movie and should be effective because of that. First of all, I think the cat-and-mouse game that gets played is not effective enough. And part of the problem is that the characters themselves are not smart enough. … The other big problem for me is that it's a movie that is supposed to be, in some ways, it's based [on] or inspired by a true story, but it's supposed to be talking about our modern, late-stage capitalist era. That also doesn't work well enough in this movie. So Cold Wallet is a movie that … you're stuck in a room with a bunch of people that you don't find all that interesting, and it goes on forever.”
Walsh: “It's all these people who get stuck in a house and how they all get unraveled by this master manipulator, which you don't quite buy, because it's Josh Brener being the master manipulator. … I think it's just trying to do a lot of different things that it just doesn't quite pull off. … I found it boring.”
The Accidental Getaway Driver
This is inspired by the real-life story of an Orange County Vietnamese American taxi driver who was kidnapped by three prison escapees.
Walsh: “It's really beautifully shot. What they decide to do is stay in the subjective world of Long Ma, the cab driver, and really delve into his experience. So when the film starts, you don't really know what's going to happen. He's very confused. He's a cab driver. He gets a call, he shows up, and these guys literally take him for a ride, they hold him captive for a week. And during this process, he develops a strange friendship with the other Vietnamese prison escapee, because he's the only person he can really communicate with. And that character is played by Dustin Nguyen, who's really, really good. Those two lead performances are really good. … The filmmaker decides to do a lot of these lyrical, dreamy memory sequences and flashbacks to Long Ma's childhood in Vietnam, and he's a veteran of the war, and his family life has broken apart. But it really grinds the momentum of this story to a halt. This is the kind of story that should not lose steam. It should pick up steam. It should be this tension thrill ride, but they decided to not do that. “
Grierson: “It's almost more of [an] atmospheric psychological thriller, as opposed to … how is this guy going to get out of this type of thing? … It's very much a movie about long Ma and the flashbacks that he has, and how they connect with what's going on right now. It's almost as if the movie is weighing this incident with everything else that he has experienced in his life. … It's a movie, I think, that is really talking about immigrant experiences. And what connects Long Ma with the people who have taken him hostage is that in their own very, very different ways, they're all people who have tried to find a home somewhere.”