THE FRONTIER (2015)

Studio:       Kino Lorber
Director:    Oren Shai
Writer:       Webb Wilcoxen, Oren Shai
Producer:  Dana Lustig
Stars:     Jocelin Donahue, Izabella Miko, Jamie Harris, AJ Bowen, Liam Aiken, Jim Beaver, Kelly Lynch

Review Score:

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Summary:

A woman on the run crosses paths with a mysterious mix of people hiding their own secrets at a roadside diner in the desert.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

On the run after murdering Jed Howard Burnham, an oil tycoon heir who attempted to rape her, Laine stops at The Frontier, a roadside diner and motel along a remote desert highway. Laine meets The Frontier’s owner Luanne Bryce, who was once a Hollywood showgirl, as well as local lawman Officer Gault and an acquaintance of Luanne’s named Lee Towers.

John Flynn and his wife Gloria arrive at The Frontier to wait for Gloria’s brother Eddie King. That night, Laine breaks into the couple’s room to steal Gloria’s diamond necklace and prescription pills. While hiding, Laine overhears Flynn and Gloria cryptically discussing a major payout coming their way.

Laine escapes and drives away from the motel. When Laine notices a newspaper article in her car, she puts together that the people at The Frontier were involved in an armored truck robbery that heisted two million dollars. Laine returns to the motel and comes up with a plan to steal the crew’s money.

Luanne hires Laine as The Frontier’s new waitress. When Laine rejects his advances, Officer Gault punctures one of Laine’s car tires. Eddie arrives at the motel.

Laine runs a test on a customer by drugging his coffee with Gloria’s pills and knocks the man unconscious. Laine breaks into Flynn and Gloria’s room again to replace the stolen necklace and to steal more pills.

Lee grows suspicious of Laine’s presence in the diner as he holds a meeting with Flynn, Gloria, and Eddie to wait for the money launderers to deliver their heist cut. In front of Luanne, Lee drags Laine outside and threatens to shoot her.

To save herself, Laine confesses that she killed Jed Burnham. She proves it by producing Burnham’s personalized money clip, which Lee pockets. Laine admits that she knows about everyone’s involvement in the robbery, but says she only wants two thousand dollars to fund her escape from authorities. Luanne agrees.

Everyone goes back inside the diner. Laine drugs the coffee and everyone eventually passes out. Laine hides the bodies before Officer Gault returns to apologize for his behavior earlier. Seemingly suspicious, Gault ultimately leaves without incident.

A girl with a feather earring arrives and drops off a bag of cash. Laine takes the bag and tries driving away, but discovers her freshly flattened tire.

Eddie recovers. He knocks out Laine and escapes in his own car with the bag of cash.

Laine, Lee, Luanne, Flynn, and Gloria regain consciousness. Laine claims that Eddie drugged the coffee so that he could make off with the score alone. Lee forces everyone into Flynn’s car and they take to the road.

Eddie’s car is found flipped over. A short distance further, Eddie is found near death next to another car. Eddie tries to explain that Laine drugged the coffee, but Lee shoots him in addition to Eddie’s sister Gloria.

Lee and Laine find the girl with the feather earring and another person dead in the unknown car’s trunk.

Furious over Gloria’s death, Flynn shoots Lee in his stomach. Flynn then starts strangling Luanne on the ground, but Laine knocks him off of her. Luanne recovers a gun and kills Flynn.

Luanne and Laine leave Lee for dead as he clutches Jed Burnham’s money clip. The two women return to The Frontier where Luanne finds a pill bottle and realizes Laine drugged the coffee. The two women fight over a gun until Laine kills Luanne.

Laine tries escaping with the money, but Officer Gault stops her outside at gunpoint. Gault calls dispatch for backup to report the bodies, but lies about having found the money. Laine realizes it was Gault, not Eddie, who killed the people found in the car trunk earlier. Gault takes the money and leaves Laine to tell a story to the police. In the aftermath, Laine goes free, with Burnham’s murder attributed to Lee and the armored car heist and other deaths pinned on The Frontier crew.

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Review:

On the run from the law, Laine’s bloody hands and an engraved money clip are the only clues to the crime she just committed.  Fatigue setting in and her clunker car coasting toward kaput, Laine stops at The Frontier, the kind of crime movie greasy spoon that collects shifty drifters, distrustful drinkers, and mystery men like the desert road outside collects dust.

The Frontier is run by Luanne.  George Raft would have called Luanne ‘doll.’  Humphrey Bogart might have said ‘dame.’

Whatever forced a former Hollywood showgirl into ownership of a dingy diner and adjacent motel, Luanne sees Laine falling along a familiar path.  Laine’s improvised story of escaping a battering boyfriend earns Luanne’s sympathy, as well as an offer to continue flying under the radar as The Frontier’s waitress.

Laine is more interested in quickly burgling the new motel guests, a dapper duo of mustached Englishman and materialistic arm candy, and getting back on the road in the dead of night.  But when she puts together that Luanne, the couple, and a gruff man eyeing her suspiciously over his coffee are part of a heist crew patiently awaiting their payout, Laine concocts a plot to carve her own slice from their pie.  If she can also keep the bad penny local lawman from persistently sniffing about, Laine might give the others more than enough run for their money to see who comes out as the craftiest criminal at The Frontier.

Imagine the pre-shower Marion Crane scenes of “Psycho” tinged with a touch of Tarantino pulp and you’re halfway to picturing the neo-noir story and style of “The Frontier.”  Oren Shai’s directorial debut is an exercise in executing a throwback thriller with a modern eye for detail and ear for dialogue evoking tones more common to black-and-white films starring fedora-sporting men and radiantly glowing women.

Between its fiction and its flair, “The Frontier” exists in a middle ground of 1940s film noir and 1960s cinema chic.  Production design hits all the necessary notes to achieve such amalgamated atmosphere, yet does so with remarkable restraint careful to not oversaturate the setting.  Artificial elements like digitally-added film grain or exaggerated outfitting aren’t bloodying noses with retro mood.  “The Frontier” simply drops the viewer into a casually crafted period piece whose feeling comes from characterization, not cinematic circus tricks.

If you didn’t know co-scripter Webb Wilcoxen was also a playwright, you could guess it from the way “The Frontier” is staged.  Most of the movie takes place inside the single setting or just outside.  Scattered driving sequences are filmed with process trailers or nighttime backgrounds so black, they could be done on a soundstage, and possibly were.  This approach is a double-edged sword in that it contributes to the film’s unique texture, yet the stage play aesthetic puts stiffness into scenes in need of more sizzle.

“The Frontier” is an actor’s movie, the sort of project performers ache to sink teeth into because similar roles are few and far between.  Reunited from their previous period outing in Ti West’s “House of the Devil,” Jocelin Donahue and AJ Bowen, along with standouts Jim Beaver and Kelly Lynch, portray their personalities through the shapes of their mouths and looks in their eyes.  These are people telling their collective story not through words, but by body language and camera movements.

When “The Frontier” does speak, it sometimes trips over what it says.  Every one of the seven main characters is given a private spotlight to shine whether they need it or not.  Kelly Lynch nails a maudlin monologue about her broken dream background, for instance.  But its shoehorned inclusion late in the movie makes it more of a momentum killer than a story-mandated necessity.  If “The Frontier” weaved more intense intrigue that made better use of these individual portraits, its crime drama would crackle instead of simmer steadily.

“The Frontier’s” occasionally paused plot progression prevents it from climbing all the way up a mighty Raymond Chandler hill.  But there are not enough artists in modern moviemaking going out on the limbs risked here.  Few first-time features are as assured as Oren Shai’s.  Conventions are bucked with confidence, even when the outcome isn’t fully satisfying as entertainment.  That notion alone makes “The Frontier” an interesting project to ponder, and Shai a compelling creator to keep two eyes on.

Review Score:  65

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