Rusty industrial buildings, alligators, baseball caps, bluegrass, Piggly Wiggly supermarkets, swamps, gospel, pick up trucks, and people saying 'have a nice day'. While watching 2019's The Peanut Butter Falcon (shown on BBC1, available on the BBC iPlayer, and directed and written by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz) you're never in any doubt which part of the US you're in.
The South! That's fine with me. I enjoy that southern aesthetic and films like Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild, John Huston's Wise Blood, and Alan Parker's Angel Heart have proved that the region is ripe for all manner of fantastic and innovative film making.
While I wouldn't, perhaps, rate The Peanut Butter Falcon quite on the scale of those films mentioned above it is an interesting and enjoyable watch from the very start and becomes, as we learn more about the characters involved, genuinely moving. I had a lump in my throat before the end, that's for sure.
We begin with Zak (Zack Gottsagen). A young man with Down Syndrome who is living in a retirement home (acting as a care facility) in Richmond, Virginia yet is eager to escape and train to be a wrestler like his hero The Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church) who Zak watches in action, over and over again, on old video cassettes.
Some of the staff, like Eleanor (Dakota Johnson), are nice and treat Zak well. Others call him a 'retard'. So it's no surprise when Zak, with the help of his elderly room mate Carl (Bruce Dern) finally escapes. With no money, no real knowledge of the world, and no clothes except the white pants he's wearing he makes his way to a boat by the side of the swamp and hides there.
The boat belongs to Tyler (Shia LaBeouf) and Tyler has just been fired for bringing in illegal crab catches. Rival fishermen Duncan (John Hawkins) and Ratboy (Yelawolf) give Tyler a kicking and in either retaliation or a fit of pique he sets fire to their fishing gear and heads off on the run.
At first, unaware that Zak is in the boat with him. Their initially cool relationship thaws into one of convenience and, ultimately, one of friendship and respect as Tyler encourages Zak to head south to North Carolina and The Salt Walter Redneck's wrestling school with him. The idea being that Tyler will continue on to a town called Jupiter in Florida where he'll pick up work on a fishing boat.
Obviously, with no money and no transport this doesn't go quite to plan and the unlikely pair set off on something of a road movie - sometimes on foot and sometimes on a boat. More a raft really and one that has been built for them by a friendly, if eccentric, blind folk preacher they meet en route, Jasper (Wayne Dehart).
Their epic journey south involves swimming across rivers, playing with guns, sleeping rough, larking about on haybales, putting melons on their heads, and getting baptised by Jasper. All the time, however, Zak is being pursued by Eleanor who has been tasked with returning him to some kind of incarceration and Tyler by Duncan and Ratboy who are intent on either recompense or, more likely, violent revenge.
When Eleanor, inevitably, catches up with Zak and Tyler events take an unlikely, but rather moving, turn and from thereon in you're never quite sure how this story is going to pan out. When Zak opens up to Tyler about the life he's had you can't help being moved and when Eleanor tells her story it's equally powerful but you can't help wondering - what about Tyler?
What's his story? He's more than capable of dishing out platefuls of kind hearted homespun wisdom but he never seems to give up much of himself. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? It's probably best that we, the audience, are left to make our own decisions on this.
Towards the end, as former professional wrestler Jake 'The Snake' Roberts' makes a satisfying cameo, Zak has to face some uncomfortable truths about life as well as about wrestling but The Peanut Butter Falcon is, at heart, a feel good buddy movie. It's a rather unusual one - and a twist always seems likely - but it's a well constructed and very enjoyable one. Rather lovely. Thanks to my mate Adam for recommending.
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