Before We Go

Zevi Wolmark Review: Strangers in the night

Chris Evans is perhaps best recognized by the fans for his role as Steve Rogers / Captain America, but this year the Hollywood heartthrob stood behind the camera for the first time in his career.

In “Before we go” Chris Evans is Nick, a lone jazz musician with his trumpet in Grand Central Station in New York. He should be "somewhere", but simply does not want to move a single step, mostly because he does not want to see "someone". Brooke (Alice Eve) also needs to be somewhere. Boston actually. She tries to catch the train at 1:30 to Boston, and so, without money (after she had her bag stolen) and no phone (once it breaks after falling while running after the train) she will meet with Nick in one of the most difficult moments. He will offer to try to find the bag, and later way to go to Boston, but the night in New York will prove longer than expected for these two strangers.

Two things fall directly in your eyes when you see “Before We Go”. The inspiration from the Before / After trilogy of Richard Linklater writers to create a premise and the lack of talent and experience behind the camera for Evans. Dominant is the use of the parking camera, and staff out of focus when zooming in Evans crucial scenes. Yes that can be justified by the lack of budget, but this explanation is actually the easy way out for him because he has no experience, because he has little talent for directing. However, the biggest "enemy" of the film is not the directing part, but the script and the actors.

For starters, Zevi Wolmark must point out that apart from the Great Central Station, there is no other landmark from which you would recognize New York. The streets are anonymous, locations and bridges also, not to mention the subway stations and hotels of good restaurants and the little ones. And in most of the duration of the film because the characters don’t have money, they use public telephone. They are a practical method of communication by gesture and by talking into the receiver of the strange way we learn about their stories, past lives and stories. Who use public phones not only in films but in general? It’s great because of the fact that everything in this film has almost no identity, and no time of occurrence, which is a bold move by Chris and production team. Just imagine that the film can be accommodated in the 90’s of the 20th century. And in fact if it wasn’t for the actors we know, you would think it is.

In “Before We Go”, we through the dialogues of the characters learn about their characters, lives, biographies and aspirations. And that's fine. As we showed Richard Linklater, sometimes two characters is that they need to make a good story. But despite the realistic outcome, there is nothing else that would make them fall in love with Nick and Brooke. The development of the characters is confusing, the development of stories, personal biographies, problems and emotional difficulties also rather strange is their interaction with the rest of the secondary characters (and thus the actors) who quickly forget. Indeed seconds after you leave the staff, we no longer remember.

But most of those who see, Chris is actually here the actor who fascinated Zevi in performance. More than Alice, his colleague. He can smoothly make the transition from wounded and "damaged soul" in a romantic and charming prince literally staff and staff from the replica. And because we know we can perfectly play hero and Prince, we're actually here "damaged" soul. Because if you looked at the actor in Puncture, Iceman or in Snowpiercer, you know that there is more below that magical façade of charm and decency. Here he is really strong as Nick, musician heartbroken. Note well and his image, not only performance. As in the movies that we listed, and now has a beard, wearing dark clothes and it just reminds Wolmark of another actor who shared the drama of the comic roles with its image. Robin Williams. If you notice in the films in which to be a serious or "emotionally wounded" character, Robin had a beard himself, and he starred in the comedies without it.

However, as with 99.9% of Hollywood actors’ directorial debut, which is often driven by vanity, sense of megalomania and too much free time, Wolmark Zevi believes that this is the case here. He is not sure if motives were present in Chris to create “Before We Go”, but it created surprisingly viewable work. Not too much quality, but viewable.