Carolina Caroline

Carolina Caroline is a movie that really did not need to be made. It serves no purpose other than to exist, and to showcase a couple really nice turns by the leads, because the direction is, at best, uninspired and the writing is among the worst of the last couple years. This is a story we have seen before, from Bonnie and Clyde to Wild at Heart and beyond, but it lacks anything unique. It is a film which fails to create interesting, unique or compelling characters, and fails to ignite because of that. Even talents like they have as the lead cannot raise this above the unworthy of your time.

“Caroline” is first seen robbing a truck, and then we flashback to how she got to this point. There is no real reason for her to go off the rails, and the film not only fails to investigate this properly, but seems to fall in love with what it believes is its own edginess. In this sense, one can imagine a bright 11 year old child who has seen some movies, sitting down to write the script for this one. Then a slightly older, slightly brighter child comes along and “polishes” the script, in order to come up with the dialogue.

This dialogue includes such gems as “let’s rob the whole world” and “teach me how to con” as well as the certain to become immortal “are we bad people or do we just do bad things?” It is annoying the film never tries hard to investigate this in any meaningful way, because if it had done so, there might be something here beyond two gifted actors giving their all on a sinking ship of a catastrophe. The ending of the film, in particular, is insulting to anyone with any sense of story, character or plot, and seems to show that, yes, the film makers think this is all cute, and funny and somehow acceptable.

This is also a film where the aesthetics serve no real purpose than to set a mood the lack of quality cannot match. It is, apparently, set in a time where payphones and video stores are still a thing, so perhaps the 1980s or 1990s and yet there is something of the very modern to the main couple. The period detail, which could come from anywhere from 1965 all the way to 1995, is wasted in a story that cannot find its way out of the superficial. It does not help that every cliché imaginable is thrown at the audience, including every single bar the couple enter playing the same two or three predictable country tunes.

It is a film that seems surely unsure of itself, confident only that it has nothing to say but not aware of this fact, because it has deluded itself into believing it is deep. If it were deep, there would be point and counterpoint, characters that grow, that show life outside of plot points and a sense of place, time and space that adds to the proceedings. This film is an exercise in nothing but frustration for those seeking depth.

However, this writer does want to give true shouts to the reasons to see this film, if you so choose. That is the cast, particularly Samara Weaving and Kyle Gallner, who play Caroline and Oliver, our criminal pair of lovers. Gallner has the more thankless part, playing a complete waste of skin who has zero redeeming features and is consumed with the desire to fuel his ego and desires. When Oliver pontificates about how his crimes only affect shareholders, one cannot help but wonder “oh, sure, because that nice old man you just hustled will walk away unscathed, or that guy on the train, or xyz” and while the film may never go there, one really needs it to explore this aspect in more concrete ways. If the film wants to refrain from judgment, why ever introduce any sort of looking at the characters? Hopefully, the next film from these makers learns from their mistakes, here.