ADOPT A HIGHWAY: Meandering First Feature Has Its Heart In The Right Place

It’s a gamble for anyone to step into the director’s chair. You’re putting yourself into the position of what’s essentially a manager. The role has you collaborating with different groups, operating what should get coverage, how to deliver it, and what should make the final cut, all to make the best production it could be. When you’re an actor who’s taking up directing, it must be nerve-wracking. All eyes will switch from seeing the actor-turned-director as a screen presence to a screen creator, and their vision will be put on display as an argument for more or evidence of wanting it to never happen again.

Actor or not, that first turn as the captain of the proverbial ship can never be the best or the easiest. In actor Logan Marshall-Green‘s directorial debut Adopt A Highway, the flaws of such a beginning effort are on board in different shades, from forgivable to overbearing, as much as its genuine desire to tell a resonant story runs beside it. As noble as the latter is, the former outweighs it, making for a messy release that can only hint at a real potential beneath its allure.

A Character Made to be Loved

Ethan Hawke takes center stage as Russell Millings, a recently released convict who served twenty-five years for possession of an ounce of marijuana, in accordance with California’s now-defunct three-strike law. Now thrown into a world foreign to what he once knew, with no knowledge of modern technology, and seemingly under a strong case of selective mutism, Millings must navigate a lonely schedule of work and then his home in a motel room – until he comes across a baby in a dumpster during his graveyard shift. Attached is a note, stating her name is Ella, and even when he tries to call the police, this infant gives Russell the resolve to break up his routine as he tries to care for little Ella.

It’s an easy way to stir sympathy for the lead. Taking a man with little excitement or joy in his life after paying a harsh debt to society, and giving him purpose in the form of caring for another life tends to make for a good draw. Hawke is not a rookie to playing the man without hope, as his turn as a dejected minister in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed from last year earned him the most acclaim of his career. The difference is whereas Reverend Ernst Toller was soft-spoken and patiently steaming with his growing crisis of faith, Millings is played like the idea of an aloof hero.

He’s indiscernible from a Forrest Gump-type of figure, acting humble and unfocused or speaking in such a hushed tone that he’s barely heard. Not to deny that someone with such an demeanor is unrealistic, but to have it persist as he taps keys on a computer, Googling if he can keep a baby he found that isn’t his, it portrays him as being far less experienced than one expects a convicted felon to be, no matter what the previous two strikes were. There are moments that humanize him with success, like his evening to himself at the Santa Monica Pier along with the sequences of him bonding with Ella, but every other interaction just feels unsubtle, reminding us that we’re just watching someone act rather than reveal a troubled man’s story.

A Film Without Direction

Quite interesting for this film is that in spite of its minimal length at just under eighty minutes, Adopt A Highway ends up deviating from what it first starts to boast with the plot about Russell and Ella. When the child is hurt, and has to be taken to a hospital, Russell decides to skip out on any misinterpretation of kidnapping by taking a bus trip. This makes up the second half of the film and winds up feeling like a longer and unprompted portion tacked onto a short film.

This is also a moment where from here on out, the aspect ratio goes from filling the screen to scope. Aside from drawing slight attention to the decent landscape cinematography from Pepe Avila del Pino, it feels odd and unjustified in the grand scheme. The bulk of his interactions on this trip are with a character played by Elaine Hendrix, who’s dealing with her own brief crisis before deciding to have a bit of fun with the low-speaking protagonist.

The argument can be made that much like Russell’s existence, the lack of direction or flow make perfect sense to serve as a narrative parallel. It’s not impossible to take the film’s word that it’s operating under a genuine sympathy for America’s prison population, and the ones who are released with their credentials overlooked due to their convictions. One sequence has Russell explaining his felony to the man who works the desk at a computer store, who’s surprised by the length of his sentence due to his race (“25 years for weed? But you’re white!”). If there were more moments calling attention to how the three-strikes law was a direct attack on working class convicts, along with those made up of people of color, the film would’ve had a brave lead into really discussing the issue. As it is, there’s not much to grab onto in a story that would rather drift along.

Adopt a Highway: Conclusion

Perhaps it’s the length that makes it a tough sell, attempting to convey a mood in such limited time. It may also be the overbearing music that undermines key scenes involving Hawke‘s performance coming through for a tender reaction, or simply reminding its audience what is to be laughed or sniffled at. Whatever the factor is, the potential lingers over Adopt A Highway like a dark cloud, ready to pour some nuance onto what becomes a rather muddled first effort. Logan Marshall-Green would serve decently from letting the events speak for themselves, as the situation can be a hook on its own, but what we receive feels inauthentic despite all its best intentions.

Adopt a Highway premiered at South by Southwest on March 10, 2019, and will be released on November 1, 2019 by RLJE Films.