Tim Doiron’s screenplay for Wander is a huge mess. The problems begin and, as it turns out, end with the protagonist, who is a paranoid conspiracy theorist tasked with solving the gruesome murder of a young woman. The fact that the man is a conspiracy theorist means a few problematic things for Doiron and director April Mullen.
First, we learn everything right alongside Arthur Bretnik (Aaron Eckhart), the man in question, and that includes anything that furthers his outlandish theories regarding what is “clearly” a “deep state” covert government. Second, Eckhart’s performance is made of growls and grunts and inconsistent limping, which doesn’t exactly do much to help us sympathize with the character.
Along with his old friend and confidant Jimmy Cleats (Tommy Lee Jones), Arthur is the cohost of a semi-popular deep-web podcast, centered upon the “lies” of a corrupt government and the shadowy agents and officials that conspire against the people. They’re a fitting pair, with Arthur’s galumphing gallop and Jimmy’s fast-talk forwardness, and their skills are put to the test when a woman named Elena (Deborah Chavez) claims that the police department of the small town of Wander (somewhere in the Midwest) is complicit in the murder of her daughter (Elizabeth Selby).
We see the heinous crime in the brief prologue that sets up this situation: The young woman escapes the carnage of a highway accident, only to be brutally murdered by a time-release explosive inside her chest. The detail of the explosive certainly captures Arthur’s attention, as it directly connects to the tragedy of his past (quite convenient, that): His wife was paralyzed and daughter killed in an auto “accident” targeting himself, and the only person known to be the culprit of the crime was a John Doe killed with a similar device.
This sets Arthur off on a stumbling, nearly incoherent search for whomever targeted the girl with this device and the connection it may or may not have to the attacks upon his family. Doiron also clumsily attempts to establish that other characters exist within and outside Arthur’s closed world, such as his wife, Tanya (Nicole Steinwedell), who is unresponsively near-comatose, and helpful family lawyer Shelley (Heather Graham), whose aid eventually becomes quite extrajudicial.
The movie isn’t much of a mystery, especially because Doiron believes in the all-consuming power of the red herring. There are so many of them here (including the clearly corrupt town sheriff, played by Raymond Cruz, and a mysterious benefactor, played by Katheryn Winnick) that it becomes as difficult to determine which of the climactic twists we are supposed to believe in the reality-skewing finale (25 solid minutes of utter insanity on the movie’s part and withering bemusement on ours) as to care about any of this flimsy nonsense.
The “revelation” of what’s going on seems to be any one of three, equally anticlimactic situations, with the “real one” chosen at random and dependent upon ridiculous plotting to bring it to fruition. Mullen certainly approaches everything with a propulsive and grimy style, but Doiron is the chief problem-maker in Wander.
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