Brothers go on a drug-fueled road trip in Scott Monahan’s two-hander.
Good thing there’s nobody around. John and Jacob avoid interstates as they head west and north, squatting in abandoned houses situated far from any active communities. The boys make their own fun, swigging booze as they drive and ingesting a-worthy array of pharmaceuticals. If they’re driving toward railroad tracks and one warns of a “bump in the road,” that phrase has a double meaning.
These drugs, hijacked somehow back home, are part of a vast stash — thousands of pills, zipped into little plastic bags and stuffed into dozens of teddy bears. Because nobody thinks there’s anything suspicious about two freaky-looking youths with a trunk full of teddy bears. Jacob wants to sell the stuff quickly, but John’s convinced that the supply/demand equation will serve them better in Anchorage, where well-paid fishing crews have few ways to spend their dough.
Abandoning most of the expected mile-markers of the road movie , the pic mostly just soaks up the brothers’ chemistry, listening to them riff off each other and watching the pastimes they invent while stoned and untethered. Their dirtbag high spirits can be infectious, at least until Jacob starts barfing or John’s temper flares. The movie offers just enough hints at their shared pain to remind us they’re human.
Monahan throws in one or two flourishes that are open to unflattering interpretations: Is that corny, orchestral “America the Beautiful” just simple-minded irony regarding our nation’s opioid crisis? But cheap commentary is scarce here, and empathy runs deeper than a first glance suggests. These boys are doomed and dim, and you wouldn’t want them rolling through your town. But in a more forgiving place — Alaska? — maybe their lives won’t be unredeemable.
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