Review of the film “Desperation Road” by Nadine Crocker

Nadine Crocker’s film Desperation Road is in theaters. Mikhail Trofimenkov I still didn’t know whether to cry or laugh at the ordeals of the restless residents of Mississippi.

A bleeding man, riddled with bullets, screaming wildly, “I’m dying!” drives up to his ex-wife’s house. It’s easy to guess how the wife reacts: “Larry, the court forbade you to come within two miles of us!” How does your son react? “Dad, what the hell are you doing here!” “What, what, I’m dying, son,” dad wheezes. But there is nothing to do, the law is the law, you have to go to die spectacularly in another place, outside the restricted zone.

Okay, screw Larry (Ryan Hurst), he’s a supporting character after all. But then the main character Russell (Garrett Hedlund) runs up to the hospital emergency room with the bloody main character Mayben (Willa Fitzgerald) in his arms. It’s heartbreaking that your Larry screams like one crying in the desert: “Someone, hey, someone, help!” Presumably, only his scream wakes up the lazy night shift, who suddenly notices that something strange is going on in front of the hospital entrance.

Scenes that, perhaps, even the authors of the best parodies of Hollywood melodramas would not have thought of. “Airplane” is resting. Meanwhile, “Desperation Road” is not a parody, but a natural tear-squeezer. And the problem of the film is not that it squeezes out tears – they can and should be squeezed out skillfully and subtly – but that it follows all the recipes from screenwriting textbooks at the same time. Judge for yourself.

In the very first frames of the film, we see the elegantly shabby blonde Mayben taking a stack of letters from social services from her mailbox. It’s clear: the girl has big problems. Taking her daughter in her arms, she rushes out of the house to a certain motel, where she enthusiastically tells the child how her dad adored the state of Mississippi, a land of miracles coming true. She does this so unconvincingly that it becomes clear: the mother is lying, most likely she does not remember her daughter’s father, or even does not know. The daughter falls asleep hugging a teddy bear, apparently her only toy.

At this point, the audience should already be crying bitterly, but Nadine Crocker has not yet exhausted her textbook reserve of script moves. Maben frantically fiddles with the couple of dollars she has left in her hands. Glancing out the window at the truck parking lot in front of the motel, he notices a brood of girls with reduced social responsibility serving truckers. What is your Sonechka Marmeladova, she sighs sadly, preens herself to the best of her ability and goes out onto the battlefield. After which he naturally finds himself in the free clutches of a lustful and mustachioed deputy sheriff, who, to his death, intends to treat the honest girl to the entire night shift of the police station. Eh, sheriff-sheriff, weren’t you taught that in any circumstances you shouldn’t relax and leave your service revolver unattended.

All these nightmares happen to the heroine in the first ten minutes of screen time. Or else it will happen: tears will stand on end.

After we’ve been asked to feel sorry for Mayben, it’s time to cry over Russell’s fate. A guy with a well-groomed beard is getting out of state prison on parole after serving seven years and forty-two days. Right in front of the gates of the prison, he is met by two unpleasant people, who inflict severe bodily harm on him and promise to return. After being kicked, for some reason Russell only has a flirtatious scratch on his nose. Therefore, the question of everyone they meet is “What’s wrong with your face, guy?” cannot help but be puzzling.

Russell does not have it as hard as Mayben, but his mental suffering is also great. He ended up in prison for causing a fatal accident due to drunkenness. He broke the heart of his mother, who did not wait for his return from prison. During his imprisonment, he lost his girlfriend, who got married and had children. And the same Larry with a tire iron is running after him.

Larry, however, is also a poor fellow: in that same traffic accident, as you can understand, he lost someone close to him—his daughter, or something. He drinks, doesn’t remember how old his son is, breaks windows and destroys walls.

To be honest, this savage with dreadlocks is the only one of the characters in Despair Road whom you can, and even want to, feel sorry for. In the end, only he has at least some kind of backstory and the right to the notorious despair.

As for both Mayben and Russell, they have no right to sympathy, since they have no sane background. We see on the screen only white trash – “white trash” or “white trash”: where the “legs” of their unfortunate destinies “grow” is absolutely unclear.

And the only sane person on the screen turns out to be Russell’s father, played by the wonderfully smiling Mel Gibson, who is sitting on his terrace in an embrace with a good rifle and a charming Mexican woman.