The genius of the film is that it keeps you guessing to the end. There’s nothing as trite as an explanation for the unrelenting determination of a psychopath to kill another man.
Dennis Weaver is the only real character. He plays a businessman whose plans to drive to a meeting become an effort to simply stay alive.
It’s tense and claustrophobic, shot in such a way that enhances the drama. The downbeat ending satisfies, too.
There’s lots that’s worthwhile about this independent film directed by Martin Hynes. Lou Taylor Pucci and Zooey Deschanel are both appealing in the main parts, and the core story is a good one, but it’s let down by some aesthetic choices. There are too many rather laboured dream sequences. (It’s quite telling that the picture on the DVD box is misleadingly taken from a scene that the main character only imagines.) The “cowboy” theme is overworked, too. The “suspense” about the car owner – Who is she? What does she look like? – is casually thrown away when the character is visualised as being with him on the journey before the couple actually meet. Also, I really hated the music by M. Ward – half-hearted, “stoner” songwriting that manages to be both mediocre and grating.
If the road-trip narrative had been allowed to dominate, and a more realist approach had been taken regarding what we see on screen, it could have been far more compelling. Instead, it feels like a film for – and made by – easily impressed teenagers.
A drifter named Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) walks out of the desert and appears unable to speak. His brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) travels from Los Angeles to collect him. We learn that he’s been wandering for four years without contact, presumed dead, and has clearly undergone some kind of psychological trauma. In L.A., he’s reunited with his son (Hunter Carson) and begins a sort of rehabilitation. But that recovery process cannot be completed without Travis facing up to – and finding – his estranged wife (Nastassja Kinski).
It’s a sort of road movie, and the landscape shots always look stunning. Ry Cooder’s iconic slide-guitar soundtrack helps to make it even more atmospheric. It’s a painful exploration of the characters’ feelings, and in some ways quite upsetting. The climactic scene towards the end doesn’t quite satisfy, however: it changes the pacing and feels self-consciously “theatrical” compared to what’s gone before. On the one hand that magnifies the impact, but on the other hand it jars slightly with what’s come before.
That point aside, it’s a poignant story about families and the damage they can do to each other.
Sam Riley plays Sal Paradise (Kerouac’s semi-fictionalised version of himself), chasing experiences, intensity and worldly wisdom as he travels back and forth across the USA in the late 1940s. Like everyone else in the story, he’s obsessed with Dean Moriarty (played by Garrett Hedlund and a fictional version of Neal Cassady), who seems to live wilder and more freely than anyone.
The film has some – but perhaps not enough – of the book’s restless energy. The character of Carlo Marx (played by Tom Sturridge and a fictional version of Allen Ginsberg) may be the best representation of Kerouac’s endless hunger for life.
Kristen Stewart is excellent as Marylou, given more prominence here than in the book. Kirsten Dunst is always strong and she’s believable as Dean’s neglected wife Camille. Amy Adams has a cameo as Jane, wife of Old Bull Lee (fictionalised version of William Burroughs), and Bull Lee himself is played by Viggo Mortensen. These are all wise casting decisions.
Despite lots of impressive elements I found this adaptation somehow unsatisfying, perhaps because the book meant a lot to me. Ultimately, it just made me want to read the book again.
It’s formulaic in the extreme. Britney seems natural enough as an actor, but the script has no sparkle and the plot offers no surprises. I hoped they’d rob a bank or encounter a zombie apocalypse or something, but no such excitement occurs. Also, her dreary companions Kit (Zoe Saldana) and Mimi (Taryn Manning) are presumably there to make her look better. Her parents are played by Kim Cattrall and Dan Aykroyd, but it’s a struggle to believe they are the actual mum and dad of Ms. Spears.
Crossroads tries to deal with issues such as teen pregnancy, the pressures of gender roles and the value of family, but the abundance of cliché means that it does so only superficially. It’s designed as fan fodder (you can almost hear the focus groups behind it), and in that sense it achieves everything it sets out to.
