Review: Galveston

Hitman with a terminal cancer diagnosis Ben Foster is sent on a job by boss Beau Bridges. Job goes to pot (he was clearly set up to fail), and somehow Foster ends up with a new driving companion, 19 year-old hooker Elle Fanning (and her 3 year-old sister), as he plots his next move. Robert Aramayo plays a young crim who tries to get Foster to come on board with him. The exchange doesn’t go well for the former. At all.

Perhaps star Ben Foster really wanted to work with French actress Melanie Laurent, no matter what the project was. What possessed the latter to choose this adaptation of a Nic Pizzolatto (creator of the “True Detective” TV series, writer of the flat remake of “The Magnificent Seven”) novel to be her English-language directorial debut is puzzling to me. Scripted by the author himself, it’s a disappointingly clichéd road movie with noir touches that goes nowhere new, and does so slowly. It’s pretty sluggish and boring to be honest. Foster and Elle Fanning are much, much better than the material, whilst Beau Bridges’ considerable (and underrated) presence goes entirely wasted in a too-tiny part. It’s the kind of film where even if you haven’t seen it before, it feels like you have a million times over. The film’s final stages admittedly do take a turn (in tone) I wasn’t entirely expecting, but it’s not a turn I was terribly receptive to. In fact, it’s pretty grim and pointless and definitely depressing. It completely falls apart with a time jump that just doesn’t seem to belong here at all, at least not as written. After spending 95% of the time as a small character piece road movie, it suddenly wants to be “Magnolia”? Yeah, that’s a hard pass from me thank you.

I guess some might be interested that Foster’s character remains fairly unlikeable throughout, but that’s hardly enough to put this one over the line for me. Despite helping out Fanning, and despite his terminal illness, he’s still not a nice guy at all and is frequently pissed off in fact. He’s the type of guy who chain-smokes despite his lung cancer diagnosis, and is pretty much in denial about the latter. Aggressively in denial, in fact. A well-cast Foster sells it well, it’s just not especially interesting to watch him do it. Elle Fanning is stuck with the stock ‘trashy hooker with a heart of gold’ role, though she’s actually even more impressive than Foster perhaps because she’s got even less to work with. I keep waiting for her to have a truly breakout role, but this ain’t it. Nice small performance by Robert Aramayo as a crim with ambition, loose lips and total shit for brains.

A very minor film with a couple of moderate-to-majorly impressive lead performances playing stock characters, it lacks both originality and urgency. This one’s no “Hell or High Water”, folks. Dreadful final act, as well.

Rating: C