Director: Erick Zonca
Year Released: 2008
Rating: 3.0
A drunken, promiscuous mess (Tilda Swinton, willfully and delightfully playing against type) agrees to help a crazed woman kidnap her son from his wealthy grandfather, then goes on a road trip with the boy in the hopes of extorting money, ending up in Tijuana where kidnapping is "the national pastime." Credibility is tested a little too often for this to be 'great' in any sense, but there is something to be said for a movie in which I actively wished, in the first half-hour, for its anti-hero - a mostly despicable waste of human life - to be strangled and thrown into a ditch someplace only to have my view of her changed by the end so that I was actually hoping for her to pull this revolting scheme off (it's about redemption!). That's really an amazing transition for a movie to make - few can really be as non-judgmental and distanced as Zonca and still make it work, so I'm thinking the movie belongs more to Swinton than the script. The reference to Cassavetes' Gloria is fitting, but I think this one actually pulls off what John only tried for: the child in this case isn't precious or 'cute' but rather a snob (he ditches his Wal-Mart clothes for a blazer), and "Gloria" doesn't have a heart of gold, but a heart of Goldschläger.
