A CIELO ABIERTO / UPON OPEN SKY (2023)

Best known for scripting early Road Movies for Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, here Guillermo Arriaga switches gears to write a Road Movie for his two kids, Mariana Arriaga & Santiago Arriaga in a joint directing debut.  And nepo-darlings or no, they all take to the screen in a perfectly natural manner.  Same for a cast of newcomers on this modest revenge saga on a case of unpunished vehicular manslaughter and its aftermath.  It’s 1995, two years after a semi-truck plowed into a car carrying father & 12-yr-old son heading North on a hunting trip.  The older son stayed home, not doing well enough in school to come along, and now obsessed with the accident (if it was an accident) and a kind of survivor’s guilt.  For two years he’s been haunting ‘junker’ lots looking for clues or some connection to follow and now has come up with a name & an address.  Heading North, he’s without much of a plan other than to confront the man.  He’s got the recovered younger brother in tow, as well as a new step-sister they barely know.  He’s also got a gun to back him up, but barely enough cash to get there and back.  For the film, the big problem is that you can guess exactly how the third act is going to play out, but the trip, along with the solid film technique keep you watching.  And while it’s fairly common to shoot a period film in matching period style, the Arriagas skip past the ‘90s indie scene and head farther back stylistically to what you might expect from an ‘70s indies pic.  A decision that pans out for them, perfectly dovetailing with the material and the flat land they pass thru.  A bleak beauty pervading the film’s look.  And if it’s all a bit generous in running time and goes overboard in giving youthful folly the benefit of the doubt, the film doesn’t plead for sympathy and delivers enough eccentric bumps along the way to more than merely hold attention.  (Though you wish they’d take that extra shot to show the food the kids order at diners along the way!)  And when the younger brother, now two years older and nearly a foot taller than he was before the crash, revisits some of the places he'd been, revealing how much he’s grown in two years, it packs an emotional wallop and acknowledgment of loss in a minute or two that films running two-and-a-half hours fail to match.