Starring: Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Joey Slotnick, C.J. Wilson, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, Matt Damon
Director: Ethan Coen
Country: USA
UK Distributor: Universal Pictures
The Coens (No Country For Old Men, The Big Lebowski) have long been a dominant force in Hollywood, but what they’ve never been is consistent. For every Fargo there is a Hail, Caesar!, and their solo projects have been met with even less success. Drive-Away Dolls, the new film by Ethan Coen alone, will not be remembered as one of their greatest efforts.
In Philadelphia in 1999, best friends Jamie (Qualley – Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Poor Things) and Marian (Viswanathan – Blockers) are both down on their luck and in need of a break. Deciding to visit the former’s Aunt in Florida, the pair set out on a road-trip across America in a cheap rental car. Unbeknownst to them, they’ve taken the wrong vehicle, containing the severed head of a criminal (Pascal – The Last Of Us, The Mandalorian), which a criminal gang – and its leader (Domingo – Rustin, The Color Purple) – would very much like back.
What follows is a classic cat and mouse pursuit, with archetypal criminals feeling like they’ve dropped straight off the page from a 90s Tarantino screenplay. A black comedy, the story delights in its own dramatic irony, with the girls not knowing what’s in their boot and the criminals not knowing who they are pursuing. The film results in enough brutality to not sugar-coat the criminals on their tail, but there is definitely a romantic idealism about the two girls driving across the US with a pair of inept criminals failing repeatedly to catch them.
Qualley and Viswanathan are an entertaining duo, with the former footloose and fancy-free, with the latter uptight and tense. This contrast makes for a watchable central dynamic, but neither are particularly likeable, which shoots this movie straight in its own foot. With ridiculous and overblown villains and oblivious protagonists that bumble across America, there’s little to hook an audience emotionally here, relying instead on nostalgia for the type of films the Coens themselves made in the 90s. Subsequently it feels self-referential and… arrogant too.
The crime genre is a saturated one, which is decidedly no longer en vogue. Though it will undoubtedly experience a renaissance one day, Drive-Away Dolls is a mediocre place-holder in the meantime that will be remembered as a Coen Miss, not a Coen Hit.
UK Release: Out now in cinemas, released by Universal