![]() ![]() Still, Johnson and LaBeouf generate sparks as Zak’s clashing, flirting surrogate parents, and Gottsagen makes it easy to understand why they adore him.īut though The Peanut Butter Falcon takes its name from the wrestling moniker Zak comes up with one whiskey-fueled night, this is Tyler’s redemption story. A detail or two more about Zak would have been welcome too. Johnson is called upon to exude warmth, wisdom and grace, all of which she does with her typical magnetism, but “idealized female” isn’t enough, even within this tenderhearted narrative, and it’s disappointing how little the screenplay gives her to bite into. The specifics of Eleanor’s experience are especially pared down. Those wolves, in a drama that wisely keeps backstory to a minimum but whose simplicity sometimes borders on the simplistic, are more keenly defined for some characters than others. A seemingly abandoned house turns out to be the home of a blind preacher (a very good Wayne DeHart), who not only baptizes Zak and Tyler and gives them what they need for their raft, but also bestows a blessing to set them free from “the wolves of the past.” The terrific scene in a general store where Tyler and Eleanor first cross paths (terrific even though he tells her, right on the nose, that Zak might be “living the American dream, like a Mark Twain story”) sets the tone for the odd encounters that pepper the odyssey - the movie could have used more of them. ![]() ![]() Faced with the endearing Zak’s adulation, Salt Water Redneck moves from wariness to eager engagement, a transition that mirrors Tyler’s. Their pilgrimage, as someone they meet calls it, takes them through a pure, sensory world, with handsome sunlit long shots of the improvised family at rest and play on the water - until all that unforced lyricism crash-lands in plot mechanics and the goofy, scrappy, utterly unglamorous world of Church’s character, who gets assists from real-life wrestlers Jake “The Snake” Roberts and Mick Foley. Glimmers of dark undertow notwithstanding, it unfolds more as a storybook idyll, especially after Eleanor finds that she can’t beat ’em and, with no complaint, joins ’em on the raft they’ve built. Yet even with Hawkes’ venomous Duncan and his tattooed henchman, Ratboy (rapper Yelawolf), on their trail, there’s little suspense or heat in their journey through the Carolinas. Setting his sights on a new life in Florida, Tyler promises to drop Zak at the video star’s North Carolina wrestling school. His pep talks with the younger man, urging him to embrace his inner hero, might be lesson-y too, but LaBeouf subtly animates them with the recognition that Tyler is addressing himself too, and searching for self-forgiveness.įor his part, Zak is seeking a very specific form of heroism: He wants to become a pro wrestler like his idol, Salt Water Redneck ( Thomas Haden Church). He needs to teach Zak to swim and to shoot. At loose ends since the death of his brother ( Jon Bernthal, seen but not heard in a couple of judiciously used flashbacks), Tyler needs this chance for brotherly expression. Despite his predictable initial reluctance, Tyler is clearly charmed by Zak’s childlike innocence and gutsiness.īut more than that, more even than the unabashed affection between them, is the unsentimental way Tyler awakens to the connection, an awakening that’s exquisitely played by LaBeouf. He soon finds a traveling companion, guide and protector in LaBeouf’s Tyler, who, after some larcenous business involving crab traps, is on the lam from the law and from John Hawkes’ vengeance-bent meanie. Zak survives his first hours of freedom, not to mention the indignity of spending them in nothing but tighty-whities - not unlike an overgrown baby, but one with fierce determination in his eyes. ![]()
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