Peter Bradshaw 

We Gotta Get Out of This Place review – interesting but flawed Texas neo-noir

This debut feature has touches of Tarantino and the Coens, but wears its influences like a shapeless, unstructured suit, writes Peter Bradshaw
  
  

We Gotta Get Out of This Place
Claustrophobic … We Gotta Get Out of This Place Photograph: PR

This debut feature from the Hawkins brothers, Simon and Zeke, is a Texas neo-noir with touches of Jim Thompson, Tarantino and the Coens. It wears its influences and mannerisms like a shapeless garment: an unstructured suit. There is talent and ambition here: the film has style, mood, references – and, inevitably, a great opening and credit sequence – though it's short on substance. Logan Huffman is BJ, a good ol' boy whose knockout girlfriend, Sue (Mackenzie Davis), is heading to college in the fall, as is his equally brainy best friend, Bobby (Jeremy Allen White) – whom he suspects of having the hots for Sue. So BJ decides he's going to steal a shedload of cash to bankroll one huge farewell for them all, but succeeds in getting Bobby and Sue mixed up in a scary criminal mess, for ambiguous and vengeful reasons of his own. There are some interesting ideas here; some tasty double-crossing and sinister small-town tensions. Bobby has a great scene in which he tries without success to warn the horribly venal sheriff (Jon Gries) what a mess he's in, only to find that this lax lawman appears to be up to his neck in it as well. Despite the title, it stays where it is: claustrophobic and trapped.

 

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