Mark Reviews Movies: IDA RED

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 4, 2021

Writer/director John Swab sets out to tell a story of crime and consequences passed down through generations with Ida Red. Everyone here is or easily could become trapped within a life where the likely options amount to prison or death. There's nothing new to this particular story, and with Swab's attention focused on the various schemes of this criminal family, the movie overlooks the one element that might have elevated it above formula: these characters.

They're intriguing as they stand here, pushed to commit robbery and murder out of desperation and loyalty and a twisted sense of destiny. As effective as some of these performances are, the screenplay, though, only scratches the surface of these characters, what drives them, and the toll this legacy has taken on each of them.

Our protagonist is Wyatt Walker (a solid Josh Hartnett), who is the son of a married couple whose crime spree decades ago became infamous. His father was killed in one of those robberies, and his mother Ida (Melissa Leo), nicknamed "Red" (naturally), wound up in prison with a decades-long sentence. She's dying now, and Wyatt wants to ensure that his mom's final days aren't spent locked up in a cell or in a prison infirmary.

The threads of this plot and these relationships aren't as simple and straightforward as this angle, though. We also meet Wyatt's uncle Dallas (Frank Grillo), who is gay, dresses like a cowboy, and is also a cold-blooded sociopath (If not for how sturdy a presence Grillo provides in this role, the whole of it would probably seem like a series of rather detrimental stereotypes—which isn't to say the character doesn't come across that way on paper anyway). In the movie's opening scenes, nephew and uncle, along with an accomplice named Jay (Beau Knapp), rob a tractor-trailer truck carrying a bunch of pharmaceuticals, killing one driver and putting the other in a coma in the process.

Out of coincidence or convenience or both, the lawman looking for the perpetrators of the fatal heist is Wyatt's brother-in-law Bodie (George Carroll), who's married to the criminal's sister Jeanie (Deborah Ann Woll). She has denounced and disowned Ida, and the only reason she still speaks with Wyatt and Dallas is out of dwindling hope they'll reform. Also, her teenage daughter Darla (Sofia Hublitz) looks up to and adores her uncle.

The setup here is promising enough, especially if we accept that Wyatt is a conflicted anti-hero—not wanting to partake in his family's business, but feeling obligated as a devoted son to help his mother. Little of that actually comes across in this story, although that is the strength of Hartnett's performance, which fills in some of the blanks left open by the constant forward motion of Swab's plot. There's no sense of Wyatt outside of his crimes and his connection to the shadier side of his family, so there's also no real sense of the character beyond the requirements of the plot.

That has Wyatt and Dallas, under orders from Ida (who somehow has managed an entire criminal empire, which extends far beyond her family, from behind bars), looking to tie up the loose ends of the drug robbery (A somewhat discomforting but mostly awkward scene sees Dallas dancing for an innocent woman before coldly murdering her). She also points the two in the direction of one final job, which could earn the entire family enough cash to leave town and start anew.

Meanwhile, Bodie and an FBI agent (played by William Forsythe) start to connect nephew and uncle to the pharmaceutical robbery, and Darla starts to believe her uncle's assertion that crime is simply in this family's blood. That latter storyline keeps with the theme of this cycle of generational crime, but matters escalate so quickly and with such unconvincing motivation that it seems like busywork for the characters involved.

Obviously, a lot is happening in this story, between the fallout of the opening heist, the criminal investigation into it, the assorted connections and conflicts among these characters, the planning for the next robbery, and yet another subplot, which has Wyatt and Dallas threatening and bribing the head (played by Ben Hall) of the parole board in order to get Ida out of prison. The mechanics of each plot thread are simple, although to the point that each one also feels rushed—and the whole of the plot comes across as convoluted. The climactic robbery, at least, offers some straightforward and decently staged action, but even it falls victim to a sense of Swab trying to tie up matters as easily and as swiftly as possible.

A good number of these issues might have been irrelevant—or wouldn't have existed in the first place—with a better sense of these characters as they confront the situations into which family loyalty has forced them. Ida Red, though, is more concerned with those assorted situations, and the resulting tale remains a mostly generic one as a result.

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