The charismatic actor/director Paddy Quinn, best known for the mock-reality TV series Massholes, chose this intriguing tale of reconciliation for his feature film directing debut.
Billy’s (Kurt Finney) unexpected dishonorable discharge from the Army resulted in him storming out of the family home in Texas after his father completely disowned him. In the midst of the drama, he never got to say goodbye to Joe his teenage brother, and now ten years later Joe (played by Quinn) has finally tracked him down in Los Angeles to tell him that their father is on his deathbed.
Having never kept in touch with each other at all the siblings are now like total strangers and it takes an immense amount of discussions/arguments before Joe persuades a very reluctant Billy to drive back home with him to Texas in his old truck to see his father for one last time. Along the way a somewhat naive Joe discovers that his brother is gay and this is the cause for more verbal sparring not just because the younger man is homophobic, but because he is offended that Billy didn’t feel he could share the information with him.
The next few days in the truck has the siblings struggling to discover more about each other dispelling the myths that they had formulated over their long absence from each other’s lives, and also discovering that they have both been in denial about so many things. Whilst it is always clear that Billy will never be able to forgive his father, he is however keen to re-establish his close relationship with Joe even though they are coming from two different places on many levels and still need to learn how to compromise.
In what is essentially a two hander this road-trip movie may not have too many surprises in its plot but it plays out well, in part because of the excellent chemistry between Quinn and Finney and a script that they co-wrote together. They make for quite a charming pair on screen which helps keep us totally invested in what the final outcome will be.
Labels: 2017, drama, families, road movie
