BREAKWATER - Mark Reviews Movies

Breakwater, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 21, 2023

The protagonist of Breakwater isn't the smartest guy around, but he's loyal—to a fault—and naïve in ways that at least explain him making more mistakes than someone in his position should. If his position didn't involve going back to prison for multiple parole violations and putting the lives of two innocent people in danger, it might be easier to ignore how dumb his decisions constantly are.

This isn't some drama, though, about a guy who doesn't know any better and whose problem is that he can't help but make mistakes. It's ultimately a thriller about how Dovey (Darren Mann) finds himself indebted to a man he doesn't know is a cold-hearted killer and basically serves up exactly what that man wants. It's tough to sympathize with this guy, mainly because writer/director James Rowe seems set on making the character ignorant and unaware enough to set the plot in motion and keep it moving toward its generic end. In other words, Dovey is less a character and more a plot device.

He's a pretty bland one, too, as played by Mann. The story starts with Dovey being released from prison after a stint from a conviction resulting from an unspecified crime. What we know for certain is that it can't have been too terrible and that Dovey's father Luther (J.D. Evermore) is innocent. How much can we trust the judgment of a man who names his kid Dovey, though, just so that, apparently, someone can make a joke that he must be the "lovey-dovey" type?

That character is Eve (Alyssa Goss), who lives in a small, coastal town in North Carolina, where Dovey shouldn't be, considering the fact that he's on parole and one of the conditions is that he's not allowed to leave the state for any reason. His reason comes from Ray (Dermot Mulroney, a bit too hammy for this particular character), a fellow convict who vaguely protected Dovey while he was incarcerated. Ray says he's dying of cancer and just wants to make sure that his daughter is doing fine after all these years.

Why doesn't Ray just make a call or write a letter to his daughter? Well, she apparently wasn't thrilled that her old man went to prison, and at a certain point during Ray's explanation, Dovey's intuition probably should kick in, pointing him toward the notion that maybe the daughter doesn't want her father to find her for some good reason.

It doesn't, even after Ray only finds the daughter because she's in a stray photograph of an old ship that suddenly surfaced (The coincidence is almost too perfect and raises a lot of additional questions when the truth is revealed), after Dovey realizes that the daughter has changed her name, after Eve tells him a story about her father that doesn't line up at all with Ray, and after Ray escapes from prison with the destination of the little town. The guy has to have it all spelled out for him.

Ray is not a good man. Indeed, he wants revenge on Eve for being put in prison and is willing to kill a bunch of random people along the way if necessary. Mann's wide-eyed performance almost makes us wonder if Eve needs to do a little more explaining after she reveals the truth (Her character, by the way, is consistently inconsistent in how she reacts to Dovey's deception, which also leads to the two spending a night together in her boat).

She kind of does have to explain more, which is sort of amusing, although the dark reality of Eve's relationship with Ray—beyond some stolen loot that might actually be the real reason for Ray's mission or just a bonus to him—is far from the stuff of even accidental comedy. All of that emerges incredibly late in the plot, although—if, like Ray, one is capable of doing some basic math—that twist isn't much of a surprise.

Obviously, it is to Dovey, who seems incredibly surprised that his parole officer (played by Sonja Sohn) catches on to his absconding from Virginia, despite how often he uses the cellphone she knows he has, as well as his unfortunate habit of saying exactly where he is and what he's doing whenever he calls his old man. The father probably could have run this errand for Dovey, by the way, but then, the mess of the plot couldn't have started.

Breakwater is a mess. Yes, a lot of it stems from how laughably unaware its main character is, but lest one forgets, Rowe has to make him this way for the plot to even barely exist in this form.

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