Grim slow-burn Southern Noir is just too grim to enjoy or to enlighten. A down-on-her-luck single mom is hooking her way across the south going from truck stop to truck stop, daughter in tow, trying to get back home to Mississippi. When she's arrested and then assaulted by a dirty cop, she shoots him in self-defense and then goes on the run. As with most noir thrillers, things spiral downward from there. There are loads of secondary characters and subplots that probably worked for a novel but should have been eliminated or trimmed down for a film, which is probably a result of the novel's author adapting his work and not wanting to let anything go. However, in the film's favor, Willa Fitzgerald, who plays the hard-luck single mother, and who is a new actress to me is fantastic. Even though I felt somewhat distant from the material, she draws the audience into her character and is now an actress who I can't wait to see in more films. I also very much appreciated the look and style of the film and director Nadine Crocker's choice to focus on actors and atmosphere over showy camera stylistics, which is atypical of most neo-noirs. She too is someone who I want to see more of and plan to watch her one previous film. Mel Gibson is another standout, playing the religious father of a recently released ex-con. Overall, DESPERATION ROAD is well crafted and features some stellar dialogue by Michael Farris Smith, but is rather meandering, so unrelentingly grim it was hard to enjoy, and a slow-burn film that failed ever catch fire. Still, it's worth checking out.
Review of Desperation Road
