Determined to overcome their inauspicious circumstances, two star-crossed lovers, a young, recently-released and unpredictable ex-con with bad luck, and a sexy, listless girl-next-door with a troubled family the couple, make a desperate, last-ditch effort to escape their dead-end town-but soon find themselves ensnared in a cycle of crime.
This is well-worn territory, and though the two leads are very good, the romance that is supposed to drive the story isn't particularly well delineated ...
Writer-director Hank Bedford's Mississippi-set romantic drama would have benefited from judicious tightening and a rethink of its uninspired, decidedly downbeat crime element.
Striding right up to the unkempt front lawn of white-trashploitation (and occasionally trespassing), Hank Bedford's indie feature debut marshals a pungent Mississippi stink at the expense of a deeper dimension.
Hollywood Reporter
December 09, 2015
Chris Zylka and Riley Keough ignite a convincing spark as lovers who dream of wider horizons. Even so, their fateful course unwinds less than persuasively, the vivid sense of place not enough to bring the one-last-heist setup fully to life.
Bedford intercuts the narrative by interviewing actual residents of the town where he shot the film; all of their stories touch on death more movingly than the fictional script does.
A scintillating lead performance, a good deal of heart and a fragrant sense of place just about compensate for some slack storytelling and a forcibly elegiac tone ...
An archetypal story made compelling by honest performances but undone by its docu-fiction style.... Bedford shirked the responsibility of building out authenticity within the film's narrative world.
