In 1998 Franka Potente earned her movie-star stripes by taking the lead role in Run Lola Run. Potente spends much of that film, as the title might suggest, in constant motion as her character hares around Berlin trying to find 100,000 deutsche marks to save her imperilled boyfriend. In stark contrast, for her first feature as a writer-director Potente has conceived a story about people mostly stuck in one place, literally and metaphorically.
For the last 20 years, protagonist Marvin (In the Valley of Elah’s Jake McLaughlin, impressive enough here to make you wonder where he’s been for the last few decades) has been confined to a prison cell, serving time for a stupid, pointless murder he committed as a young man. Newly released, with only a skateboard for a ride and the tracksuit he went in with, Marvin rolls back to the only place he can go, his childhood home in a crappy California town, somewhere between the Central Valley and the Mojave desert. His mom Bernadette (Kathy Bates) is slowly wasting away with lung cancer, cared for by kindly home help Jayden (Lil Rel Howery).
