Producers: Brent Stiefel, Stephanie Laing, Samantha Nisenboim, Rose Byrne, Danyelle Foord and Josh Ricks Director: Stephanie Laing Screenplay: Jonathan Keasey, Brant Boivin and Annie Weisman Cast: Rose Byrne, Octavia Spencer, Dominic Sessa, Ariana DeBose, Demi Lovato, Simon Rex. Elsie Fisher, Lea DeLaria, Corbin Bernsen, Bree Elrod and Becky Ann Baker Distributor: Roadside Attractions/Vertical
Grade: C+
David-and-Goliath stories in which an underdog triumphs over the system are reliable crowd-pleasers, and Stephanie Laing’s movie about a homeless woman who fights to get her car back after it’s been impounded by a towing company seems to fill the bill—especially when the protagonist is played by the redoubtable Rose Byrne, who masterfully portrays a person struggling to maintain a brave front even as she teeters on the verge of despair. But her relatively simple story has been overstuffed to the point of becoming diffuse and lumpy.
“Tow,” a rather anemic title, is based on Amanda Ogle, who became the subject of a piece in a Seattle newspaper after her car was removed from a parking lot and kept for over a year while she waged a legal battle to win its return. Jonathan Keasey and Brant Bolvin based their script on interviews with Ogle, so the film necessarily reflects her perspective while allowing for embellishments by the writers. In short this is a drama, and one over-engineered for emotional impact, rather than a semi-documentary with claims to objectivity.
Ogle (Byrne) is introduced in 2017 as a woman struggling to rebuild her life after injuries she suffered in a car accident had led to dependence on drugs and alcohol, and to her separation from her daughter Avery (Elsie Fisher). Living out of her car in Seattle, she parks the 1991 Camry while going to a job interview, only to find it gone when she returns. After reporting it stolen, she learns that after being abandoned it was towed to their lot by a private firm. She locates it in the lot, but Cliff (Simon Rex), the clerk, informs her that the company requires payment of towing and storage fees before the car can be released to her—and the charges increase with each passing day. Unable to pay, she sues the company.
Eventually Amanda, a feisty woman who’s ordinarily reluctant to accept help from anybody, agrees to be represented in her legal travails by Kevin Eggers (Dominic Sessa), an idealistic young lawyer at a legal aid non-profit—but only after she’s initially represented herself and won a court order in her favor, only to have unscrupulous company attorney Martin La Rosa (Corbin Bernsen) resort to brazen delaying tactics to exhaust her into giving up.
Despite devoting himself to the case, Kevin is no more successful than Amanda had been. Things drag on for more than a year before La Rosa is finally compelled to appear in a courtroom, and then it’s Amanda’s stirring statement to the judge that results in a verdict in her favor.
The chemistry between Byrne’s prickly Amanda and Sessa’s awkward, diffident Kevin gives the legal part of the picture a winning seriocomic vibe, even if the niceties of the litigation are left obscure (toward the close, it’s mentioned that Kevin erred at the start by taking the matter to the wrong court, but how is never explained). Had the screenplay concentrated on the details of the case as it winds its way through the system, the focus might have been more pointed and the message about a bureaucracy prone to corruption and obstructionism better conveyed.
As it is, the script is content to point the finger at the odiousness La Rosa, whom Bernsen plays with a full order of ham as the character is shown at golf courses and fine restaurants while depicting Rex’s Cliff as a nice guy who does everything he can to help Amanda get through her ordeal.
The oversimplification is required because the makers want to make Ogle’s personal reformation as important a plot thread as her legal case—if not more so. Without her car as an abode, albeit an uncomfortable one that leaves her prone to harassment from cops and community watchdogs, she has to seek shelter, eventually winding up in one at a church (where services, it seems, never occur) run by Barb (Octavia Spencer), a steely earth-mother type who occasionally takes up a baseball bat to keep her charges in order.
That leads to the introduction of other residents whose stories might not be related in as much detail as Amanda’s but still take up lots of time. The most important is sweet Nova (Demi Lovato), a pregnant woman whom Amanda befriends and accompanies to the hospital when her delivery time arrives. (Yes, the movie gives her a chance to sing at a community party, to teary effect.) Another is cynical, sharp-tongued Denise (Ariana DeBose), who’s embittered because she’s kept from her kids—a fact that mirrors Ogle’s painful separation from Avery, whom she calls repeatedly as their relationship grows more and more frayed. (One of the movie’s odder bits, presumably reflecting Ogle’s actual situation, is that the girl designs flamboyant clothes that she’s wearing during their conversations. If nothing else, the device proves a godsend for costume designer Leah Katznelson.)
Oddly enough, at the start there’s another shelter resident, Jocelyn (Lea DeLaria), a belligerent bruiser who’s perhaps the most interesting of the lot. But she’s tossed out by Barb early on for trying to steal Amanda’s boots and then punching her when she objects, and she never returns. That’s rather a pity.
Those who remain, however, get their moments in the sun, like Nova’s song (even Barb gets a speech explaining why she’s such a hard-nose), and there are periodic group-therapy sessions in which Barb prods Amanda to open up. Finally, she does, with a monologue about her past life that Byrne delivers with commanding technique even as one is aware while watching how theatrical a moment it is. But it’s one of many instances in which Laing, recognizing her luck, gives the actress free rein.
The larger point, however, is that many of the shelter-based sequences act as digressions that detract from the through-line about Ogle’s battle to save herself, in large part by getting back the car that represents her freedom and ability to reunite with Avery. The other women’s stories may be affecting (even though sappily sentimental), but except as they relate to her, they detract from the film’s focus. The difficulty of melding all the parts together may explain the presence of no fewer than three editors—Sarah Flack, Max Ethan Miller and Joe Klotz—among the behind-the-scenes crew.
But thanks to Byrne and Sessa, and to a lesser extent the always reliable Spencer, “Tow,” despite its flaws, remains a compassionate portrait of a woman determined to stand up for her rights and her dignity despite all the obstacles society throws in her way. It’s obviously a low-budget independent project, but production designer Liz Toonkel and cinematographer Vanja Černjul manage to give it a grainy sense of authenticity despite (or perhaps because of) the limitations of shooting in New Jersey rather than Seattle. The score by Este Haim and Nathan Barr comments, sometimes wittily, on the action.
And whatever the missteps, Byrne makes it watchable.