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INTO THE ASHES
Director: Aaron Harvey Cast: Luke Grimes, James Badge Dale, Robert Taylor, Marguerite Moreau, Frank Grillo, Brady Smith, Jeff Pope, Andrea Frankle, Scott Peat MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:38 Release Date: 7/19/19 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 18, 2019 Writer/director Aaron Harvey begins Into the Ashes with an assured sense of control. Where it goes, though, is a different matter. The first act introduces a series of characters, connected in ways that we can only infer at first, but the familiar plot brings with it an underlying momentum, as we await these characters, seemingly unconnected in every way except that they exist within the same story, to arrive at an inevitable collision. In the meantime, Harvey establishes a strong sense of these characters and their relationships through routines and everyday scenarios, which are about to be overturned in ways we come to dread. The protagonist is Nick (Luke Grimes), who works in the stock room at a furniture store and is married to Tara (Marguerite Moreau). His is an idyllic, working-class life, in which the only drawback is that his father-in-law Frank (Robert Taylor, who provides an evocative opening narration about violence), the local Sheriff, doesn't care for him too much. Nick and his friend Sal (the ever-reliable James Badge Dale) head out on a weekend hunting trip. Meanwhile, Sloan (Frank Grillo), a criminal just released from prison, and two of his associates are hunting for Nick. Harvey sets up Sloan's villainy in a single scene, in which he coerces a man to give him Nick's address, or, better, with a single moment—a turn of Sloan's head after getting what he wants but deciding to put a final note to this business with a stranger. The pieces are in place. Nick's back story as a reformed criminal comes with an unforced conversation with his hunting partner. Tension is created with a knock at a door and, later, an unanswered phone call. From the existence of Sloan, we know this will become a thriller of some sort, but Harvey eases us into the lives of these characters with such subtlety and normalcy that there's real suspense about when and how that transformation will occur. It does, and that's when the disappointment arrives. It's not just that Harvey resolves the conflict of Into the Ashes in the most obvious way possible. It's also that the movie plays a time-shuffling game to convince us that it's doing something different, abandons the well-established characters in the process, and doesn't have a third act. The filmmaker writes himself into a corner and decides to make himself comfortable there. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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