Team Experience is at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Jason on Detour.
You know what will make me feel like it's the late 1990s again real quick? (If you answered "There's a Clinton in the White House" you're a little ahead of yourself, but just by a few months.) What will make me feel like it's the late 1990s again real quick is watching a movie about verbose criminals getting themselves into hyper-violent timeline-warping shenanigans - Things To Do In Denver When You're 8 Heads In A Duffel Bag; that ol' Pulp Fiction addiction.
Do you guys remember that time Oliver Stone tried to out-Tarantino Tarantino (even though Tarantino was always really trying to out-Stone Stone) and made U Turn? That's the Tarantino-ish that Detour reminded me the most of. And U Turn's not a bad thing to be reminded of! U Turn is nuts, in a never not entertaining way! And there are chunks of Detour - which tells the story of a law student (Tye Sheridan) enlisting the aid of some do-badders (Emory Cohen and Bel Powley) in a plot against his step-father - that feel vibrant with that same sort of something-borrowed storytelling flair. Director Christopher Smith (already responsible for the tremendously under-valued thrillers Severance and Triangle) employs real visual wit, and busts out all the toys from the toy-box (De Palma lover that I am I cannot resist a split-screen) to pop and pizazz us.
But the film ultimately doesn't have the conviction of a Stone working his own mirrored riff (much less First Tier Tarantino) and it's more the fault of Smiths' script than it is of direction - the characters are never Characters, Capital C for Characters, like they need to be for something this stylized to take. These are all good performers (even in a role this underwritten you can't take your eyes off of Bel Powley; she is the real deal) but Detour never quite stops feeling like kids play-acting at big people parts. (And kids play-acting Tarantino can work; I have seen Go. We have all seen Go!)
Grade: C+