A trifle from NYC indie writer/director Adam Leon about a pair of twenty-somethings, would-be grifters, strangers who meet cute (and anonymously) after a suitcase swap on a subway platform goes wrong. He’s bagman/she’s getaway driver; attractive antagonists who’ll awkwardly discover romance. The film might be a Sundance submission that missed the cut (was it?), now streaming to help indie film fans over the long wait before the next festival. Callum Turner, dropping his British accent, is a would-be chef living at home (in Queens?) with his Polish mom (she runs an informal horse-betting parlor from her living room) and an older brother who needs a favor: drop everything and cover me on a ‘bag swap.’ Naturally, Turner takes the wrong suitcase from some innocent person and winds up on a hunt for the ‘right’ suitcase with getaway driver Grace Van Patten. It’s a long night’s journey for two soulmates, ending with everything back in place and a first big step together as a couple. Leon shows a jagged, short attention-span style, calming down as we go along, but can only do so much to get us to care about these self-centered petty thieves. The only way these stories work, especially when the tone is this light, is for the leads to win us over with natural charm. Something Turner pulls off with a naturally friendly appeal, but Van Patten doesn’t show. Too hard in her approach. Perhaps a less informal filming style could give Leon the chance to literally light up her face in a way that might let us see what he sees in her. Instead, she’s a pain. And the best scene in the film is a brief funny anti-climax when we discover what was hidden in that briefcase, and how utterly unnecessary all the skullduggery was. A real ‘shaggy dog’ story.
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