Juliette Binoche is incapable of giving a bad performance, but here she is, probably as close as she’ll ever get to a stinker, playing a long-distance lorry driver on the wrong side of the law in Mississippi. For about five minutes there’s novelty watching La Binoche in trucker mode, wearing a bandana and filthy jeans, stomping around yelling “motherfucker” at anyone who messes with her. But, her acting, like everything else in this sluggish crime drama written and directed by Norwegian film-maker Anna Gutto, feels implausible; more like tourism than anything in the real world.
Binoche plays Sally, a French Canadian we meet on the highway, shooting the breeze over the radio with her friends on the female trucker scene. A film about this community of ballsy women in the male world of trucking, dealing with the seedy truck stops and misogyny, might have gone the distance. Instead the movie shifts to Sally and her brother Dennis (Frank Grillo), who is about to be released from prison.
It turns out that Sally is being blackmailed by a crime gang, forced to smuggle drugs in her lorry, or Dennis gets it. Her latest package is human – a 12-year-old girl called Leila (Hala Finley) – and the delivery is across the state lines into the hands of a paedophile ring. When things go seriously wrong at the drop-off Sally and Leila hit the road.
Fair play to the script, which delays the inevitable bonding between Sally and Leila until later on. Sally is no bleeding heart; her first thought is to return the girl to the gang. Enter retired FBI agent Gerick (Morgan Freeman), now working as a consultant for the Bureau. He forms a ridiculously cliched double act with Yale-educated suit-and-tie-wearing desk agent Sterling (Cameron Monaghan). The script does almost nothing to build up to the revelation at the end – and the human trafficking angle feels icky. You might want to give it a swerve, Binoche or not.
• Paradise Highway is available from 17 June on Sky Cinema, and is streaming on Netflix in Australia.
