I had never heard of this movie, but the description sounded promising: a Depression-era crime yarn set in the Dust Bowl-blighted Texas Panhandle, with Margot Robbie playing a beautiful bank robber who encounters the teenage stepson of a deputy sheriff.
There are two ways a movie like this can go. Either you get a raucous, AIP/Roger Corman-style, Seventies drive-in epic complete with boobs, chase scenes, Tommy-gun shootouts, and lots of bluegrass music, or you get a leisurely paced, beautifully photographed, moody film reminiscent of Terence Malick’s BADLANDS (a movie I liked a lot, by the way).
Well, DREAMLAND goes the moody, leisurely paced route for the most part, although there are some decent chase scenes and gun battles. The slowly developing relationship between angsty Eugene Baker (Finn Cole, an actor I’m not familiar with) and fugitive Allison Wells (Robbie) after he finds her wounded in his family’s barn takes up the lion’s share of the movie. There are a few flashbacks to fill in the background of both characters. Eugene’s younger half-sister provides voice-over narration from the perspective of twenty years later. Allison wants to escape to Mexico, and of course it’s easy for her to persuade Eugene to help her. Eventually they take off together, banks get robbed, and the law, including Eugene’s deputy sheriff stepfather, pursues them.
The on-line reviews for this one are definitely mixed, with a lot of bad reviews and a few really glowing ones. I can’t give it a full-fledged recommendation, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. The cast, which includes Travis Fimmel (Ragnar from VIKINGS) as Eugene’s stepfather, does a good job. The photography is excellent. The movie was filmed in New Mexico, not the Texas Panhandle, and sometimes you can tell that, but it’s not too distracting. I didn’t spot any anachronisms, but I wasn’t watching too closely for them, either. At least there was nothing blatantly wrong. (That sounds like I’m damning with faint praise, and I don’t intend it that way.)
DREAMLAND is no lost classic, but I think it’s worth watching. And I’ve left what I liked best for last: Eugene is a big reader of crime and detective pulps, and issues of BLACK MASK and DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY are not only featured prominently on-screen, they even play a part in the plot. What’s the last movie you could say that about?
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