At the heart of every road movie is a couple of lost souls trying to find that person or place that they can call home. Perhaps the fact that their journey seems bound to fall apart at any moment is what makes these stories so appealing to independent filmmakers, who must feel that their films are equally vulnerable to the whims of fate. Samantha Davidson Green's Thrasher Road can't help but take you on the emotional roller coaster that must have taken place behind the camera while shooting a Super 16 mm film on location from California to Mississippi to Vermont in unreliable vehicles traveling forgotten highways.
When very pregnant Chloe (Allison Brown) is inexplicably abandoned by her musician-boyfriend, she leaves Los Angeles with her geriatric dog Thrasher in tow, hoping to silently slink all the way back to Vermont in her old clunker. After a near-accident awakens her to the foolishness of this plan, Chloe calls her mother asking for help. Instead, rescue comes in the unwelcome form of her long-estranged father, Mac (Christian Kohn). Stuck together in a car with thousands of miles ahead of them and thirteen years of unspoken regret behind them, father and daughter just begin to reconnect when fate reliably intervenes to test the resolve of both. While Brown hits her notes perfectly as the stronger-than-she-looks daughter-in-distress, Kohn is a revelation as Mac, slowly peeling away layers of insecurity, with only his unreliable charm and surprising sensitivity to save him from some questionable choices.
The easy humor, lived-in emotions and scenic locations all move this breezy 86 minute film along, and though it has to contend with the limited resources common to most independent features, the depth of the characters keep you from noticing the bumps along the way. Writer/director Green has a few neat tricks up her sleeve as this bighearted road trip takes a few unexpected detours, and even better, she wisely saves her best surprise for the end.
