Road movie ‘End of Sentence’ needs more gas

MOVIE REVIEW

“END OF SENTENCE”

Not rated. On VOD.

Grade: B-

A mix of road movie and father-son reconciliation drama from Iceland-born, UK-based director Elfar Adalsteins, “End of Sentence” begins in an Alabama prison where Frank (John Hawkes) and Anna Fogle (Andrea Irvine), who has lost her hair to chemotherapy, have come to visit their son Sean (Logan Lerman), a convicted car thief. For Anna, this is a last chance to say goodbye. Before Sean is released, his mother dies, and he and his estranged father are forced to go to Ireland together because it was her last wish that they scatter her ashes over some obscure lake.

It’s not a bad set-up. Hawkes and Lerman are a couple of pros. They could make this work. The screenplay by Michael Armbruster puts the contrived particulars into motion. Frank is, according to Sean, a total wuss, who does not deserve any respect. Among his other faults, Frank once saw his sadistic father burn Sean with a cigarette when Sean was a child and did nothing about it.

It’s an odd touch that I couldn’t really figure out, but you know something will come of it later. In Ireland, they stay together unhappily in a Dublin hotel room, where Anna’s friends and relatives have gathered to reminisce with them at the hotel bar. She traveled back and forth from the States on her own over the years. Frank comes across a photo of her as a young woman with a young man on a motorcycle. His name is Ronan and he was her lover. Cue the intrusive music.

Sean, who needs to get to California to start a job and a supposed new life, drinks at the bar and meets a young woman named Jewel (Sarah Bolger), an odd name for an Irish lass. She says she is fleeing from an abusive spouse. The next day, Frank, Sean, Jewel and Anna’s ashes in a blue urn head north in a rented Audi. “You’re either the pigeon or the statue,” is Frank’s life philosophy. Or maybe it’s just something dumb he says.

Right down to that dreary title, “End of Sentence” is a case of a first-rate cast struggling with second-rate material and uninspired direction. Hawkes is at a loss to make Frank more than what Sean accuses him of being, a bore. Sean is also not very interesting. He’s trouble in jeans and hoodie, a bomb waiting to go off, rattling on about “respect,” something he has not earned.

Bolger is so much better in the current VOD title “A Good Woman Is Hard to Find” that she seems like a different person. Her only standout scene is when Jewel is encouraged to sing along with a pub band to the old Dubliners’ tune “Dirty Old Town.” Her voice is lovely, and the moment is the film’s most magical and also most irrelevant.

Adalsteins of the award-winning 2011 short film “Sailcloth” with the great John Hurt makes his less than stellar feature film debut here. Yes, we gradually warm up to Sean and Frank as they close in on their final destination (the same scenic lake that was used in TV’s “Vikings” as it turns out). Yes, they run out of gas, literally and figuratively.

“End of Sentence” is a film in dire need of GPS.

(“End of Sentence” contains profanity and almost completely wastes the talent of Sarah Bolger.)

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3gApMre