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AMERICAN DREAMER (2019)
Director: Derrick Borte Cast: Jim Gaffigan, Robbie Jones, Isabel Arraiza, Tammy Blanchard, Alejandro Hernandez MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:32 Release Date: 9/13/19 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 12, 2019 What were screenwriters Derrick Borte and Daniel Forte thinking? Here's a fine idea for a thriller, in which a man, barely hanging on to the financial ropes, attempts to extort money from a drug dealer, for whom the man is an on-call chauffeur. American Dreamer establishes the man as desperate to the point of being unhinged or that some mental issues are elevating his distress, and even as the movie's problems arise, it gives Jim Gaffigan a chance to play against type as Cam, the man who isn't just down on his luck. Bad luck is crushing him. Cam was recently fired and, apparently, suffered a nervous breakdown. Now, he works as a driver for a ride-sharing company and lives out of a motel, while his ex-wife (played by Tammy Blanchard) refuses to allow him to see their son. It's a testament to Gaffigan's inherent likeability that, even with the suggestion that his character might have become violent in the past, we're still on board with Cam's plight. The idea of subverting the actor's screen persona to such an extreme degree is rather daring, both for him and for Borte, who also directed. He's behind on child support payments and could end up in prison. His brother refuses to lend him any money. In fact, the brother suggests that maybe their mother has a point about institutionalizing Cam at a psychiatric facility. Without any outside financial support, Cam is in a deep rut. His constant driving isn't going to cut it. Neither is his work for Mazz (Robbie Jones), the local drug dealer whom Cam drives around town and who also has a violent paranoid streak. Hence, he comes up with the plan to get more money out of his under-the-table employer, and that, well, is when Borte and Forte completely muck it all up with a completely wrong-headed decision. The only thing that could have been worse is what actually happens. Cam's initial plan is to kidnap Mazz's girlfriend Marina (Isabel Arraiza) for a $20,000 ransom. This is bad enough in terms of maintaining any sense of sympathy we might have for Cam. Marina isn't at the house, though (The reason becomes a discomfortingly convenient way to keep Mazz off Cam's trail later). Instead, Cam nabs the only family member who remains: the drug dealer's toddler son. It only gets worse from there—in ways that are depressingly predictable, once one accepts that Borte and Forte have embraced this decision. The idea of putting a child in peril, simply to elicit tension from a story, is always a questionable one. Here, we see Cam put the baby in the trunk of car, drive around town for a long stretch of time, and not do a thing when the child stops crying. This is, of course, a quick and easy way to communicate that Cam is at the end of his rope. It's also the laziest, most exploitative, and most infuriating way to do that. Again, what were the filmmakers thinking? It's not just that a baby is put in jeopardy as a way to arbitrarily raise the stakes of this story. It's not just that the child inevitably dies because of Cam's actions and inaction. It's not just that the entire movie seems to brush off the death, because the baby was simply a MacGuffin that no longer matters. It is that, somehow, Borte and Forte still want us to have intrinsic sympathy for Cam. That's not to say they want us to like the character. It is to say, though, that they want us to relate to him, if only because the entire plot and the whole of the movie's suspense mechanics revolve around Cam attempting to keep Mazz in the dark. This, obviously, raises numerous other issues, such as how Mazz, a pretty blatant stereotype in the first place, becomes the antagonist and how the refusal to acknowledge the true weight of killing baby almost makes it seem as if Mazz and Marina deserve what happens. The most frustrating part of all of this is that American Dreamer literally has Cam offer better alternatives for what he could have done (such as, you know, stealing a thing of value to Mazz that isn't a living person). No, the filmmakers chose a baby, and it's almost impossible to watch this thriller with any investment in its twists and turns, which are pretty predictable anyway. What the hell were they thinking? Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for
disturbing material, violence, some strong sexual content, pervasive
language, and drug use)
