Directed By Shawn Simmons

Starring – Samara Weaving, Karl Glusman, Andy Garcia

The Plot – A reformed teenage getaway driver (Weaving) is dragged back into her unsavory past when a former employer (Garcia) offers her a chance to save the life of her chronically unreliable ex-boyfriend (Glusman).

Rated R for violence/bloody images, pervasive language, nudity, some sexual material and brief drug use.

Eenie Meanie | Official Trailer | Hulu

POSITIVES

You never quite know what kind of experience that you’re going to receive from a feature length directorial debut, but there’s enough personality and enthralling intensity to Simmons initial engagement that conveys him to be a voice worth seeking out, perhaps with a little more experience along the way that could help smooth out some of his rough edges in storytelling. Even despite his faults, “Eenie Meanie” features an opening first half with a lot of entertainment value to its cause, particularly in the depths of its top speed chase sequences that effortlessly inscribe urgency to sequences that never sacrifice clarity for immersion. This is attained with some highly effective editing techniques that help to maintain all of the momentum within the established conflict, but beyond that complete practicality in the stunt work inside of the various vehicles that makes their actions appraised by an abundance of grounded believability, crafting not only these highly engaging sequences that articulate the protagonist at her most untouchable, but also those encompassing moments that showcase Simmons at his most ambitiously expressive as a captivating visual director. In addition to this, the movie bared a geographic relevance to me personally, as Simmons makes the conscientious decision to shoot the entirety of the film either in Cleveland, Ohio, or its surrounding suburbs, which enables memorability in the many familiar buildings and neighborhoods that I’ve personally traveled down in my periodic trips from Akron. This is obviously not an aspect that will touch everybody equally, however I found the decision to utilize Cleveland as the movie’s setting to be one full of visual relevance to the kinds of colorful characters and conflicts resonant in the film, with so much of Tim Ives scenic cinematography casually sifting through the rough and tumble of the so-called “Mistake by the Lake”, which has molded these characters into the resilient forces of nature we see before us. Speaking of those fierce and fiery characters, the film is also enhanced by meaningfully layered performances from Weaving and Glusman, who each channel ample personality and authenticity for their respective portrayals, emitting a turbulently rocky chemistry between them that feels lived-in with the kind of knowledge-attaining experience that outlines their initially bumpy reunion. Weaving has always been an actress who deserves so much more opportunity than what she’s receiving, and here with those boldly emotive eyes conveying everything from distrust to disappointment, we receive our single biggest insight into the emotionality of Edie, with tailoring words involving such biting lines of disembodying dialogue inspired from decades of deceit from the many men in her life. Glusman doesn’t rise as highly intoxicating as his co-star, but he does impress with a juvenile immaturity and impatience that fully embodies this man-child of sorts who never evolved beyond his life of petty crime and small time schemes. The movie is at its absolute best whenever these two share the screen in an attempt to suppress their unresolved remorse towards one another, as it’s able to combine the angsty uneasiness of Edie with the invasiveness of John, for these interactions that effortlessly elicit the toxicity between them, and while it is an unconventional love story of sorts that might be difficult for audiences to openly embrace, it’s nevertheless a lot of fun to watch the destructive tendencies of their newfound partnership, conveying an unforeseen intimate side to characters who could easily fall between the cracks of one-dimensionality if not for the commitment and legitimacy that Weaving and Glusman constantly unload at the feet of their respective approaches.

NEGATIVES

Despite the film gaining so much leverage and intrigue from stoically measured performances, or rivetingly intense chase sequences, it’s ultimately done in by an unpolished screenplay that makes the unforgiveable mistake of overlooking the importance that its heroine has on the integrity of the film, fleshing out Edie with an inconsistency of pursuit that hypocritically makes the same mistakes off-screen that she does on-screen. Considering Edie’s life has always revolved around getting the men in her life out of trouble, and the script reflects this intention by refusing to dig deeper in the psychology of the character, all so that can stand alongside any one of them by carrying out their plans, and while this does set the motions to movement with the film’s aforementioned plot, it never makes Edie’s eventual road to epiphany feel any more fully realized in the shallowly surface level journey with the character, taking so many of its meaningful beats in overly melodramatic tonal shifts during the third act, and stunting it with a resolution of convenience that it doesn’t earn in even the slightest capacity of audience intelligence. It’s also a script constantly at odds with itself by the convolutedly cluttered assemblance of a litany of excessive characters and unfulfilled arcs that grows tediously taxing by the film’s midway point, drifting our journey alongside these two protagonists further from the intimately condensed surroundings that inspired an entertainingly engaging opening act. Sometimes this pertains to an unresolved trauma arc involving a reunion with Edie’s father, that goes absolutely nowhere, while other times it pertains to the abrupt arrival of Marshawn Lynch’s rival heister, in order to appraise more stakes to an already firmly exploited conflict, and the results inside of a 100-minute runtime are just as you would expect, with neither of them feeling like an integral aspect to the movie’s long-winded execution, instead summoning an abundance of excessively unnecessary scenes that certainly could’ve been left on the cutting room floor, without the movie losing anything from their sudden disappearances. On the subject of those aforementioned tonal shifts during the third act, the film reaches for an abundance of heart that it simply doesn’t earn, whether with abrasively crude and selfish characters that the script attempts to justify, or a sentimental confrontation between Edie and John that single-handedly evaporates the charming personality that in turn elicited some effective gags during the first half. I’m certainly not above a movie evolving into dramatic territory if the signs were always there from the start, but some of the dialogue that stems from these characters during their most vulnerable of moments feels transparently emphasized with off-screen influence of the most inconsistent their character designs, resulting in these heavy-handed emotions that fall as flat as you would expect from the same movie evoking spontaneous bouts of gore in comedic capture, or even moments involving characters running naked through the streets, in order to evade a dangerous captor. Finally, the film features a litany of mesmerizing character work from a stellar supporting cast, to back up Weaving and Glusman’s efforts, but they don’t include ample opportunity for Andy Garcia or Steve Zahn, two of the most charismatic performers of the entire ensemble, who go forgotten by a script that eventually moves on without either of them. Especially in the case of Zahn’s father to Edie, the film served as an endless opportunity to conjure the kind of dramatic range that those outside of “Suburbia” aren’t privy to, however he’s deduced to two briefly forgettable scenes that honestly could’ve been portrayed by anyone other than Zahn, with a lack of resolution that makes the inclusion all the more strange to experience, leaving Steve without anything in the way of credible justification for why he would want to be attached to such a thankless project.

OVERALL
“Eenie Meanie” provides a serviceably salvageable directorial debut for Shawn Simmons, who occasionally accelerates to top speeds during engagingly commanding chase sequences, but eventually floods out from the many misfiring inconsistences within its screenplay, and a melodramatically unearned third act, that doesn’t measure its miles in terms of meaning. Though the film proves there’s plenty beneath the hood with captivating turns from Samara Weaving and Karl Glusman, there’s ultimately nobody behind the wheel to seamlessly steer its vehicle into turbulent tonal territory, sending another weekend Hulu offering weaving outside of the lines of entertainingly innovative cinema.

My Grade: 5.8 or D+