Mark Reviews Movies: THE GATEWAY (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 2, 2021

A pretty fascinating protagonist becomes caught up in a world of drug-dealing and murder in The Gateway. At first, we're drawn to this character, who suffered a lot of emotional trauma while growing up in the foster system and, as an adult, became a social worker, trying to save children from meeting a similar fate. Here's a man fighting for the innocent, but it seems as if every visitation only serves to remind him of his own demons, his own sense of helplessness, and a general feeling that, for some, the world will continue to look like a hopeless place.

Parker (Shea Whigham) can't do too much to help these feelings. He'll go above and beyond to keep track of the kids to whom he's assigned and keep tabs on their parent or parents, but the first client he visits, a young boy who hasn't seen his parents in a while since they went into the back of the house, seems like the inevitable norm. The boy's father is passed out in a drug-induced sleep, and his mother is lying dead on the bed.

That's the end of Parker's involvement in this tragic tale. It's just the start, though, of whatever's in store for the kid.

Parker drinks, but since that never helps, he drinks some more. He wakes up with a pour of some liquor. A flask and travel-sized bottles keep him going through the day. After a shift, it's straight to the local bar, where more glasses are filled and emptied and filled again. The cycle continues, as does the misery.

From the start, there's a sense that this character's story deserves to be told, which is something of an accomplishment on the part of screenwriters Alex Felix Bendaña, director Michele Civetta, and Andrew Levitas. So many movies, especially thrillers (as this one eventually and, in terms of what it does, unfortunately becomes), try to lure us in with some kind of action, scheme, gimmick, or anything that gets a plot set in motion. This one rightly assumes that a character, as weary with himself as he is with world (if not more so), is both the major draw and, hence, the only place to start.

For a while, we just watch Parker go about his work, which has stopped being emotionally draining only because there's nothing left to drain from the man, and keep himself in the only state he can stand: numbness. There's the scene with the boy whose parents won't be around anymore. There's a scene at the office, where a co-worker mocks him and shows a general disdain for the job. There's a lot of scenes of Parker at home, in the car, at a gas station, or at the bar keeping himself in booze. Through it all, Civetta establishes a rhythm of despair, which is mirrored in the quiet tones of Whigham's admirably defeated performance.

This, of course, cannot last, but even as a plot reveals itself, the screenwriters try to keep Parker away from the chaos, carnage, and complications for as long as possible. He's too important to the real core of this story, it seems, to be wasted on such mechanics.

A man named Mike (Zach Avery) is released from prison. He's an underling of a crime lord known only as "the Duke" (Frank Grillo). The Duke wants Mike to steal some heroin, so he does, resulting in a lot of bloody death. The cops are looking for the killers and the drugs, and Mike lays low with the family he left behind in prison.

The connection, obviously, is that Parker is the social worker for Mike's daughter (played by Taegen Burns), who's being raised by her mother Dahlia (Olivia Munn). We can sense the encroaching inevitable: that Mike will get the kid and/or the mother involved with those drugs, that Parker will be there to help, and that all of it will lead to some kind of violent standoff and confrontation.

All of that does happen, and it's a predictable shame, especially considering how much promise there is left touched upon and unexplored. The key to Parker's past and current pain, at least in his mind, lies with his father (played by Bruce Dern), who abandoned a young Parker and the boy's mother to pursue a musical career, before sinking into addiction. The two have an uncomfortable heart-to-heart, after the father notices Parker stalking outside his house, in which the father guesses Parker intends to kill him when he isn't looking. The son states the father should be so fortunate for that to be the case.

Parker and Dahlia have a bit of a connection—thankfully, kept either professional or just amiable—over their respective parents, and his relationships with his child clients offers the only bright moments in his sad life. A couple of scenes with one boy suggest that the kid is either a reflection of Parker's own past or the young Parker himself—the only kid he actually wants to save but cannot.

Once the gears of the drug plot and Parker's involvement in it are set in motion, there's no turning back. The Gateway doesn't abandon Parker and his pain, but the study of this character definitely matters a lot less than the movie's race toward the inevitable.

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