We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
Directors: Simon and Zeke Hawkins
Talent: Ashley Adams, Mackenzie Davis, William Devane, Mark Pellegrino
Release Date: 15th August 2014
A feature of all good neo-noir, from Chinatown to Dark City, is a sense of infallible, sprawling corruption in which our protagonists find themselves embroiled, a cosmic despair that pervades its psychic arrangement. In We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, despair turns to deference vis-a-vis that same power, as directors Simon and Zeke Hawkins allow for their narrative of corruption and deception in small-town Texas to resolve in a happy ending, due to the timely intervention of a high-ranking mob boss. It’s a strange choice that betrays screenwriter Dutch Southern’s discomfort in writing in his chosen idiom, while some extremely on-the-nose dialogue and an opening scene that sees two protagonists aimlessly “shoot the shit” over a diner table do little to elevate one’s general sense of this often charming film beyond the sophomoric.
Words: Oisín Murphy-Hall
For more film coverage this month, see our reviews of Moebius, The Hundred Foot Journey, The Congress, Million Dollar Arm, Into The Storm, Deliver Us From Evil, Obvious Child, and The Expendables 3.
