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With her follow-up to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Ana Lily Amirpour again takes a familiar genre—the post-apocalyptic adventure—and shakes it up, giving a somber spin to such classics as Escape from New York and Mad Max. In the near future, “bad batch” prisoners are thrown in a fenced-off Texas desert to fend for themselves; there is no parole, and no release. So a certain hopelessness hangs over new inmate Arlen (Suki Waterhouse), whose tale is definitely not going to be about escape. The best situation is the makeshift town—overseen by “kindly” overlord Keanu Reeves—where the residents enact a parody of decent society. The worst is ... infinitely worse. Matter-of-fact brutality and offhand compassion sit side by side, and no one here is all good or all bad, but most welcome is Amirpour’s determination not to sensationalize the violence or make this awful end of civilization look cool or alluring. There are problematic depictions of people of color, and the two-hour runtime is not justified. But while Amirpour may stumble a bit in her sophomore feature, she remains a talent to watch.
Director: Ana Amirpour
Producer: Megan Ellison, Danny Gabai, Sina Sayyah, Eddy Moretti and Shane Smith
Cast: Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves, Jayda Fink, Yolonda Ross, Giovanni Ribisi, Jim Carrey and Diego Luna
Producer: Megan Ellison, Danny Gabai, Sina Sayyah, Eddy Moretti and Shane Smith
Cast: Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves, Jayda Fink, Yolonda Ross, Giovanni Ribisi, Jim Carrey and Diego Luna
