As Sally, a big-rig trucker traversing America’s south, a miscast Binoche occupies our primary focus. Sally worries deeply about her troubled brother Dennis (Frank Grillo). Though he’s nearing parole, a few unknown factions within the prison thrash him. They demand his sister pickup and transport a package across state lines. Sally agrees, but gets more than she bargains for when she meets the two smugglers—Claire (Christiane Seidel) and Terrence (Walker Babington)—only to discover the package is a young girl, Leila (Hala Finley), condemned to a sex trafficking ring. Sally’s plans go awry when Leila murders a man at the drop-off location, sending the pair on the run to figure out how to remedy the situation before darker underworld forces find them.
Sometimes a movie fails because the director carries the worst intentions. What’s difficult to stomach is when a film falters despite a director’s best objectives. "Paradise Highway" falls in the latter category. Gutto wants this movie to serve as an indictment of a system. Traffickers get away with selling young women because the authorities simply do not care. To combat that reality, she teams a retired grump in Agent Gerick (Morgan Freeman) with a fresh, naive upstart Sterling (Cameron Monaghan) as two cops who do care. Through their dedicated eyes, Gutto interrogates the heinous punishment subjected on women by trafficking and the various, unfathomable ways the police perpetuate these crimes through inaction. Beyond that didactic intent, Gerick and Sterling serve very little purpose as they trace the country in Gerick’s station wagon looking for Sally and Leila.
While Binoche is still a wonderful, affecting actress, hence my surprise to see her here, the recent downturn by Freeman defies understanding. Here, as Gerick, a shadow of his work as Captain Jack Doyle in “Gone Baby Gone,” he spends much of his time dropping f-bombs that are meant to serve as punchlines (maybe?). Even when Binoche and Freeman appear on screen together, the pairing isn’t enough to rouse the distinguished Freeman back to his former heights.
If you squint you can nearly see the kind of movie Gutto might be aiming for. The opening scenes, for instance, feature Sally talking on a CB radio with other women truckers. She shares a caring, open relationship with them as they support one another on a road often occupied by sexist, predatory men. For a second, you think Gutto might expand this world. But she withholds. We don’t see these other women, for some unconscionable reason, until much, much later.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46pmKuZlJ7ApnnHop6hr5Gueq671aKcZqqVq7amw4xrZ2tq