Mark Reviews Movies: STRAY DOLLS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 9, 2020

Riz (Geetanjali Thapa), who had herself smuggled into the United States from India, and Dallas (Olivia DeJonge), who ran away from her neglectful mother, are far from good people. Stray Dolls, a low-key thriller about robbery and drugs and murder, doesn't quite make the case that they're worthy of much sympathy.

The argument for that case—that these two young women are the way they are because of their difficult circumstances—is obvious. Co-writer/director Sonejuhi Sinha, though, keeps these characters at just enough distance from us for that claim to work.

The two live in and work at a motel within driving distance of Niagara Falls. When Riz arrives, the owner, named Una (Cynthia Nixon), gives her a job but takes—and subsequently shreds—her passport. Despite Una's protest that she runs a legitimate business, the proprietor takes a cut from a local drug dealer (played by Samrat Chakrabarti), who operates out of one of the rooms.

Meanwhile, Riz's roommate Dallas and Una's son Jimmy (Robert Aramayo) have their own illegal enterprise involving stolen prescription drugs. When Dallas tells Riz that she has to steal something to get some of things back, the newcomer ends up taking a brick of cocaine from Una's drug partner.

We eventually learn that Riz came to the States to escape a life of crime that she was in at home. She's trying to save up money to get the rest of her family here, and Dallas wants to open a nail salon far away from this nowhere of an establishment. For the time, though, they're trapped, because cleaning rooms doesn't pay much and Una keeps them on a very short leash.

The characters' schemes turn from one crime into worse ones. Surely, Riz and Dallas' actions—from robbery, to a killing in self-defense, to another robbery, to a straightforward murder, and to an armed burglary—are lessened by comparison. After all, their targets are, for the most part, far worse people than they are.

Despite the constantly moving plot, Sinha and co-screenwriter Charlotte Rabate admirably keep their focus on the characters, and the director certainly creates a claustrophobic atmosphere of desperation and dread within its isolated location and from the parade of shady characters. Stray Dolls simply doesn't give us a good enough reason to care about any of them.

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