Movie Review: Walkaway Joe (2020)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Tom Wright  

Starring: David Strathairn, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Julian Feder, Julie Ann Emery  

Running Time: 89 minutes  

Synopsis: In rural Louisiana, small-time pool hustler Cal McCarthy (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) walks out on his wife Gina (Julie Ann Emery) and 14-year-old son Dallas (Julian Feder). Dallas is devastated, and sets out on his bike to track down his dad, who is presumably on his way to a Baton Rouge pool tournament. The teenager is soon picked up by Joe (David Strathairn), a wanderer traveling in his RV to escape his own demons. Joe and Dallas establish a bond as they track down Cal, but trouble awaits.

What Works Well: Dallas as a son looking for his irresponsible father and Joe as a father tortured by his inability to reconcile with his family are a matched pair of lost souls. Director Tom Wright allows the drama to breathe and the surrogate father-son relationship to develop organically, with plenty of mishaps and curves along the road. Broken Americana in the form of featureless back roads, small motels, nondescript diners, and uninspired pool halls create an ambience of lost opportunity and abandonment of responsibility. Both David Strathairn and Jeffrey Dean Morgan deliver lived-in performances surrendering to defeatism, the dank smell of failed fatherhood hanging over both. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The premise and resolutions are tidy to the point of predictability, and some story elements (the background to the tension between Joe and his about-to-get-married son; Cal's serious money issues), are either underdeveloped or only allowed to surface too late. The mechanics behind Dallas' pool talent wizardry are left unexplained.

Key Quote:

Dallas: Think God ever makes mistakes when he assigns children to their parents?

Joe: I don't know.

Dallas: He should have put us together.

Joe Haley: He did, son. He did.

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