Mark Reviews Movies: SOUTH OF HEAVEN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 7, 2021

South of Heaven begins with a sweet and melancholy premise. A convicted felon, serving a 15-year sentence for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon, is sitting before a parole board. He has a speech prepared for them, about how much he has changed and realized the error of his ways and become determined to live life on the up-and-up now. To say those words, as he had been rehearsing any chance he had, wouldn't be the complete truth, though.

Jimmy (Jason Sudeikis) has changed, has realized his mistakes, and is set on living a good and right life, but that's not the real reason he wants to be released from prison. The woman he loves is ill, and oh, does he love this woman so.

She has lung cancer. The doctors have given her a year tops, and while his stupid mistakes 10 years ago robbed Annie (Evangeline Lilly) of the life she wanted with him, Jimmy wants more than anything to give her that life, for as long as she may be able to hold on to her own. He doesn't just ask or request for parole. He begs and pleads for it with all the naked honesty and humility in his heart.

Co-writer/director Aharon Keshales's film establishes itself immediately as a tender and inevitability tragic romance, and if not for the aw-shucks genuineness of Sudeikis' performance and the angelic patience of Lilly's presence here, we might almost be repelled by how sappy and manipulative all of this seems. If the story had continued down this path, it might actually have worked. Indeed, at the first sign of any kind of external trouble to this couple's happiness in the limited future, the reflex is to reject it as a possible betrayal of these characters, their situation, and the tone the film so firmly establishes from the start.

For now, let's just say that Keshales, Kai Mark, and Navot Papushado's screenplay most definitely does not continue down that initial path. It's impressive, really, how many surprising and, sometimes, downright shocking turns this story takes, as everything the film seemed to be about fades into the backdrop or into memory. It's even more impressive, perhaps, that Keshales maintains that air of tenderness and sorrow, even as people's lives are put into constant jeopardy and the body count rises with apparent impunity.

Jimmy does try to make good and do right by Annie, taking a job at a local loading dock and planning a big wedding, even though she's just happy a small event. The two talk and reminisce and laugh, as they share some medical marijuana on a bench in the front yard against the setting sun. Sweet Annie, making a joke about having to choose a song that'll work for her wedding and her funeral, just breaks Jimmy's heart, before her smile and courage reassembles it for him. We really do like these two, and that goes a long way—longer as everything becomes more circumstantially and morally complicated.

The first obstacle is Jimmy's parole officer Schmidt (Shea Whigham), who does a terrible job hiding his resentment and judgment behind an air of fake politeness. Schmidt seems to have it out for Jimmy. If we suspect that the little-minded lawman is going to cause problems for our protagonist, we're correct, in that Schmidt coerces Jimmy to pick up some money from drug dealers with whom the parole officer is in business. We're also completely wrong, in that Jimmy's troubles are just beginning and have absolutely nothing to do with Schmidt, whose exit from the story is so sudden and unexpected that the screenwriters throw away every expectation we might still have about this tale.

The real plot involves a lot of coincidence—a random and rather horrific car accident—and an even more significant sense of dreadful logic. Jimmy accidentally and unknowingly becomes entangled in a deal involving local "business man" Price (Mike Colter, who's so charming we might actually believe the character's cover story, even as he oversees someone being tortured) and $500,000. Jimmy doesn't know Price. He is unaware of the existence of half a million dollars, and because of his business practices and usual associates, Price assumes that Jimmy's stunned silence and earnest denials are tacit admissions that the guy is trying to rob him.

It's impossible to determine how much to reveal here. So much happens that even a couple more plot points wouldn't harm the subsequent surprises. Let's simply leave it at the notion that each choice made by these characters, as superficially dumb as they may be, are completely understandable under the increasingly desperate situations, reveal the essence of who they are and their priorities, and create a rational flow with a sense of naïve hope and inevitable doom.

More important than any of that, though, is how the filmmakers hold on to the compassion and sadness of those earlier scenes. Price and Annie end up in close proximity and with the chance to talk about death and grief—a widower talking to a woman who's a lot like his wife and whose death will make Jimmy much like himself. Meanwhile, Jimmy spends a lot of time with Price's teenage son Tommy (Thaddeus J. Mixson), and they form an understated bond that's forced at first but, later, becomes one of mutual understanding.

That helps to ground much of the third act, which does erupt into a lot of convenient violence in order to resolve matters. South of Heaven gives us so many reasons to care about these characters, though, that all of it feels unnecessary—not in terms of plot, but on a more tragically human level.

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