El Camino Christmas (2017)

El Camino Christmas: Directed by David E. Talbert. With Dax Shepard, Kurtwood Smith, Luke Grimes, Emilio Rivera. Eric comes to El Camino looking for his unknown dad. He’s harassed, hit and jailed by a drunk local cop, who later shoots at a liquor mart with Eric +4 inside. The sheriff and deputy then shoot up the place, answering each other’s fire.

“American cinema doesnu0026#39;t do ensemble that well very often, and it frequently gets punished at the box office, as well as by viewers and by reviewers, for even trying. This film pulls together a low-key cast with an intelligent script and ends up as a quirky, darkly humorous drama that unfolds over Christmas Eve. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe characters are a motley crew of misfits and losers, stereotypical small-towners on the surface, with the obligatory pregnant woman arriving as a tv reporter from the big city. The actors, many of whom weu0026#39;re used to seeing in bigger roles where they tend to take up a lot of screen, give dialed-back performances that allow – even expect – the audience to fill in the subtext.n nAnd thereu0026#39;s a fair bit of subtext lying behind and between the stripped-down dialogue: about power and corruption, war and trauma, family and gender roles, the nature of lifeu0026#39;s choices and the cold reality of death. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis could be done as a stage play and it would be getting rave reviews that mentioned Tennessee Williams. Iu0026#39;m not used to seeing so much packed into a contemporary, for-the-masses movie, and Iu0026#39;m plainly not alone in that. The poor reviews may be due in part to an un-sparing execution thatu0026#39;s cutting too close to the tragi-comic reality of the modern American south.”