There are generally two types of road movies. The first type is the romp, using the close confines of vehicular interiors, hotel rooms and gas stations to pit two (or more) contrasting personalities against one another for laughs; a paradigmatic example is Tommy Boy. The second type is the transformation, where one or more characters, facing the silly limitations of spending entire days in a car traversing an ever-changing landscape, experience some sort of personal epiphany that leads to personal growth in some way; Rain Man is one of the more famous of this sort.
End of Sentence is a road movie of the latter type, featuring Frank (John Hawkes) and Sean Fogle (Logan Lerman) as a father-son duo who are no longer on speaking terms journeying from Alabama to Dublin and then across Ireland together. Frank and Sean embark on their unlikely journey to honor the dying wish of their wife/mother, who wanted her ashes spread in a lake in Northern Ireland. Along the way, they clash and connect and grow as people.
The story beats are all very familiar to any regular film viewer. As with any well-worn cinematic genre, what matters here are the details of setting and character. Frank is a helpless stick in the mud who cannot even make himself supper after his wife dies. Sean is a felon who misses his mother’s death because he is in prison. Frank is uptight and prissy and Sean is too busy performing his masculinity to actually accomplish anything worthwhile. Neither wants to go to Ireland—proof that they are idiots, because Ireland fucking rules—but both feel an obligation to carry out their wife/mother’s final request.
As with most road movies, including both of the two classics highlighted above, there is too much plot in End of Sentence. Too many things happen. There are lots of convenient connections, side characters exist merely to buoy the character arcs of Frank and Sean and the destination of where these characters are headed is never ever in doubt. Another common road movie plot issue crops up here, as well, as the Fogles’ road journey across Ireland makes literally zero geographical sense. None of this really matters for whether the viewer will enjoy the film: every road movie is over-plotted and full of convenient plot twists and navigational nonsense.
What does matter to the overall entertainment value of a film like End of Sentence are the co-protagonists. Here, this film is hit or miss. Both Frank and Sean are Janus-faced characters. As character types on the page, neither is worthwhile. When Frank is most fully embodying his archetypal uptight wimpy career beta-male, those scenes lack anything to make a viewer interested. The same goes for Sean’s strong, silent extra-macho world-wise shithead. But Hawkes and Lerman are both excellent actors and find lots of space to elevate their characters beyond the boring stereotypes that exist on the page and into these spaces they insert the energy that pushes the film forward. They allow the plot to coalesce into its very predictable yet satisfying climax.
Even though End of Sentence is the directorial debut for Elfar Adalsteins, it lacks the sort of flourishes of a first film. The filmmaking throughout is restrained and conventional, with straightforward editing, standard framing and few long, virtuosic takes. The Irish landscape, of course, looks gorgeous, but the film does little to showcase the scenery beyond a couple of establishing shots. The music, considering the film is set in one of the most musically rich countries in the world, is lackluster, which is disappointing especially when it is very cheap to find Irish musicians to play a tune or two for the soundtrack. Overall, this safe and easy filmmaking style meshes well with the comfort of the conventional plot and familiar genre beats. It is hard to determine what precisely Adalsteins personally adds to the film, but he certainly steers End of Sentence all the way to its closing shot with competence.
End of Sentence will never enter the road movie pantheon alongside such peerless classics as Tommy Boy and Rain Man, but it is enjoyable, comfortable and will allow Stateside viewers the chance to escape quarantine (and police riots) for the actually-greener-on-this-side grass of Ireland and live vicariously through Frank and Sean Fogle for 90 minutes.
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