Delayed Reaction: One for the Road

Premise: Two old friends drive around Thailand so one of them can make amends with exes before he dies of cancer.

 

This has been the hardest movie for me to digest from Sundance, because it has all the pieces to be an all-time favorite movie of mine and falls short of living up to the potential. Really, the problem is that there are about 3 movies trying to fit into a single movie. It's part road-trip comedy, part romance, part coming of age, part life-retrospective. It's the kind of movie that I got to what I thought was the end and realized there was half the movie still left.

 

I'll try to sum it up though. Boss (Thanapob Leeratanakajorn) lives in Manhattan, owns a successful bar, and has a lothario lifestyle. One night, he gets a call from his old friend Aood (Natara Nopparatayapon) saying he is dying on cancer and requesting that he come back to Thailand. When Boss comes back, he finds out that Aood wants Boss to be his chauffer for a special project. The project: Aood's method of getting his affairs in order is that he's been calling everyone in his phone contacts to make peace with them. After that call, he deletes the contact. He's down to only a few contacts left - the people he can't take care of over the phone - who he needs to see in person: mostly exes of his. As Boss drives Aood around, the film cuts to flashbacks of these past relationships (how they started and how they ended mostly) that also explain his and Boss' friendship. The different reunions range from sweet and romantic to cold and anti-climactic. Finally, the entire last half of the movie is Aood's parting gift to Boss, which involves long flashbacks to the story of Boss' long lost love (Prim, played by Violette Wautier), where we find out that Aood played a significant part in what went wrong. The road trip and story of Prim could each be their own really lovely movies. Putting them together and including side stories about Aood getting over the death of his father and the drama with Boss' wealthy family is too much.

 

I'm crossing my fingers that another filmmaker sees this and finds a way to adapt the ideas into a more focused movie, because I sure loved a lot of parts of this. Aood's reunions are terrific and hit a variety of tones. Boss and Aood's friendship has classic buddy comedy energy. Leerantanakajorn and Nopparatayapon play off each other really well. I fully bought into Boss and Prim's romance, even when it got really trope-y. More than any movie I saw at this year's Sundance, I can see this one growing on me, where the flaws become insignificant compared to the aspects that work completely for me. It's a movie full of big emotions and familiar story beats, but its heart is in the right place.

 

Screw it. I'm already warming to this movie...

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend