BEFORE: Kaitlin Dever carries over from "Dear Evan Hansen", but I have another PROGRAMMING NOTE: This was going to be the slot for a film called "Men, Women & Children", which I have now removed from the line-up, because my chain has TOO MANY movies in it, three in fact. I have to choose three that can be removed from this year, and the easiest way to do that and keep the chain intact is to remove the "middle film" from several chains of three films with the same actor/actress. So since this film "Men, Women & Children" seems to be about the affect of social media on relationships, and it links to several other films that might appear in the February romance chain next year, I'm tabling it until then, and I'll try to work it into the next romance chain. Kaitlyn Dever is also in "Ticket to Paradise", which could be something I watch then, plus there are several other potential connections, so it may be needed next year.
It's too bad, because I took the time to burn that film to DVD, and obviously "Dear Evan Hansen" was sort of about the effects of social media, so that could have been a nice tie-in. But, THREE films have to go, and now that I've tabled that one, I only have to pick two more, and I think I know which two. Also, I think now Ms. Dever won't make the year-end countdown, which requires three appearances, but that's life.
THE PLOT: An ex-con struggling to adjust to life in his small town forms an intense bond with his former high school teacher.
AFTER: Dropping a film from my chain here not only moves every film up one slot, but that also makes it possible for me to watch a film about global terrorism on 9/11 - that's the sort of thing that sometimes makes me feel like I'm on a good track, like I might know what I'm doing if I hit certain benchmarks during the year. Whatever.
This is a mumble-corey little relationship-y film that I probably could have justified watching in a February chain, only I didn't really know it was so relationship-y, and plus it doesn't really connect to too many other films like that, except of course for "Men, Women & Children", but I need things to connect on both ends to be part of that chain. Anyway I need this one to help get me to the very heavily sci-fi chain of four films that are being featured here next week. So yeah, I admit that tonight's film was programmed to serve as connective tissue, but I find a lot of good films that way. Also bad ones, but the linking takes me where it takes me - and it's gotten me to the end of the year four years running, soon to be five, so I have to believe in it.
It can be a bit hard to imagine what serving twenty years in prison might feel like - unless you've done that, of course. What would it feel like to go back home, after all that time in isolation? What would you do, what would you eat, would you feel suddenly exuberantly free or would you still feel burdened by the time you lost? The film kind of gets this right, because Chris was a teenager when he got arrested, and now 20 years later, he's in some state of arrested development, like he gets out of prison and doesn't know what a smartphone is, and he still enjoys riding his BMX bike and doing stunts at the park, like a teenager would. But now he has to get a job, stay clean and learn how to be an adult in the world, for the first time.
We're led to believe here that Chris served his 20 years but was innocent of the crime, or at least the murder charge part of it. It seems maybe more like he was an accessory to a crime, but he just didn't flip on the other people involved, like the guy who pulled the trigger. Whether his sentence was unjust or not is something you might have to determine for yourself.
But the key thing is that his high-school teacher believed he was innocent, and championed his cause and pled his case and her efforts eventually led to his sentence being overturned, or reduced or something. He's out because she did her research and filed the right motions, and also throughout his sentence she visited him more than anyone else, and they corresponded with each other and spoke on the phone, and you can probably guess that over time he developed feelings for her. Are they genuine or just a by-product of her being his main contact with the outside world? And what is going to happen when he spends time with Carol after his release.
Well, it's awkward at best. Chris wants Carol to leave her husband and start a new relationship with him, or one that builds on the friendship they developed during his sentence. Carol's not prepared to do that, but just the possibility of that alone casts doubt on her marriage, as she hasn't been physically intimate with her husband Tom in a very long time. She also has a teenage daughter, Hildy, and she's concerned how that would look to her daughter, if she suddenly broke up with Tom and/or had an affair with Chris.
The situation gets more complicated when Chris starts hanging out with Hildy, it doesn't seem like he wants a romantic relationship with Carol's daughter, but Carol's daughter might be growing attracted to him. Sure, what could possibly go wrong there? Also, Tom doesn't want his daughter hanging out with an ex-con, and he's starting to think that Carol's spending too much time with Chris, also. Maybe he knows without really knowing, or maybe he just wants things to go back to the way they were before his wife became a legal crusader for wrongly imprisoned people. Either way, it doesn't seem like Chris is going to give up on pursuing Carol, even though she's married and even though he has other romantic options.
This all seems very, well, possible - it could happen this way. And once you introduce doubt into a marriage or someone learns that they have other options, sometimes then you just can't go back to the way things were before, and the only way is to move forward into uncertainty. That kind of works, but will things work out here? If it were a standard Hollywood romance film, I'd say of course, but since it's more of an independent complicated relationship scenario, honestly it seemed 50-50 at best. Like, I get it, Chris just can't turn off his feelings for Carol, but he also fails to recognize that pursuing her has the great potential to throw her whole life into upheaval. I guess that also rings true, somebody who spent 20 years in prison might get out and simply not want to waste any time waiting for somebody to become available.
Even when Chris gets a job and things settle down a bit, the two potential lovers find themselves at odds - former inmate Chris just wants a simple life, where he works a job, comes home, has dinner and watches TV, but Carol, having led that life already, now wants more out of life, and ironically it was working on Chris' release that made her realize this. Can they still work things out in the end, being two very different people? This remains a bit unclear, but hey, sometimes in life these things can be a bit unclear.
My boss happens to know someone who served time for murder, the difference in that situation is that he was guilty, he confessed and turned himself in. He's come by the studio a couple of times, and yes, this does tend to be uncomfortable if people know his past, but I guess if they don't, then it doesn't much matter. But certainly this is a thing that sticks with him, like it's on his permanent record and it never goes away - this guy changed his name and his line of work, but there's only so much he can do about it. It's kind of an open question then, how much that man deserves a chance to have a job and a (semi-)normal life after serving his time.
Also starring Edie Falco (last seen in "The Land of Steady Habits"), Jay Duplass (last seen in "The Oath"), Ben Schwartz (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Pamela Reed (last seen in "Proof of Life"), Alycia Delmore, Matt Malloy (last seen in "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser"), Louis Hobson (last seen in "Lucky Them"), Aaron Blakely, Stephen Grenley, Charles Leggett, Meagan Kimberly Smith, Aaron Washington (last seen in "Laggies"), Eryn Rea, Claudine Mboligikpelani Nako, Jason Smith, Saige Hawthorne, Scott Hall.
RATING: 5 out of 10 court-mandated drug tests
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