HE WENT THAT WAY (2023) review
written by: Evan M. Wiener
produced by: Marc Benardout, James Harris, Mark Lane, Hugh Broder & Jeremy Kotin
directed by: Jeffrey Darling
rated: not rated
runtime: 96 min.
U.S. release date: January 5, 2024 (select theaters) & January 12, 2024 (digital)
When a movie opens with an introductory note that reads “This really (mostly) happened”, it better follow with the weirdness or comedy expected from such a statement. It turns out, that the most interesting thing about “He Went That Way” is the end credit footage of one of the real people this is based on. Watching that footage makes it clear the material would benefit from a documentary treatment rather than this attempt at a noir thriller.
Screenwriter Evan M. Wiener takes a bizarre road trip misadventure based on an encounter that actually happened involving a serial killer named Larry Lee Ranes, from Kalamazoo, MI. He got picked up by an animal trainer while hitchhiking the west back in the 60s, who was traveling cross-country with a famous chimpanzee. There’s an odd variation in tone throughout the movie, with director Jeffrey Darling showing uncertainty as he vacillates between threatening and amusing. The whole thing should be stranger than it really is.
The year is 1964 and celebrity animal trainer, Jim Goodwin (Zachary Quinto) is driving from California to Illinois with his client Spanky, a chimp who has supposedly enjoyed years in show business. While fueling up near Death Valley, Jim notices Bobby (Jacob Elordi), someone who’s getting himself into an argument with the owner of the gas station. That should be a red flag right there and then to keep on rolling. For some reason, Jim is drawn to Bobby and offers the mysterious stranger a ride, which changes Jim’s journey into something awkward. Bobby shares that he’s “roaming” the country after he was discharged from the military (due to his erratic behavior, one can assume it was a “dishonorable” discharge). Bobby’s behavior takes a dangerous turn when he brandishes a small pistol during a motel stop, yet Jim tries to deal with it. Jim has his own issues to deal with on the road, which include a stop to visit his brother-in-law, Paul (Patrick J. Adams) to collect money her owes him. Along the way, Jim has to navigate how to keep Spanky calm and temper Bobby’s increasingly violent nature before the mentally unstable man kills again.
Something dawned on me while watching “He Went That Way”. Well, many things did, but I surmised that neither of the two leads was a very interesting character to follow. Nothing against the actors, since I’ve seen Quinto and Elordi fare better with stronger material. It’s just that there seemed to be more areas to explore for each of these characters. Right from the start, Jim is established as something of a meek pushover. At least he shows a great deal of concern for his chimp, whom he keeps caged in the back of his vehicle. Although he tries to maintain a calm and comforting environment for the animal, it’s a mystery why he thought giving a total stranger would be a good idea. That being said, one could question why Bobby would take a ride, but we could gather that his volatile nature finds him on the run and always moving.
Both men develop an understandable curiosity for each other as their journey along Route 66 progresses. Weiner focuses more on their uneasy road trip camaraderie, yet the intimidation between the two of them isn’t fully developed. While the two inevitably learn more about each other along the way, Weiner and Darling barely devote any time for us to get to know anything substantial about these two. Considering we know a little bit more about Bobby’s behavior than Jim does, it’s hard to believe he’s telling the truth when he shares with Jim that he hopes to get to Michigan to see a girl he loves. Thanks to so many giveaways and us knowing more about Bobby than Jim does, it’s easy to think that anything he says is a lie. By the end of the movie, we pretty much know what we concluded all along…Jim is a decent and naive guy and Bobby is a psychotic killer.
This being a road trip movie, the duo are bound to encounter other people. Most of the people they meet are quirky locals who wind up putting them in predictably awkward situations. When Jim checks them into the motel on their first night, he meets a motel owner (played by veteran actor, Troy Evans) who’s intent on giving Jim a sales pitch for various survival knives. When they get to Tulsa, Bobby is intent on going ballroom dancing with Jim. That’s kind of weird, but he says it’s a good way to pick up chicks. They don’t turn out well, but they do wind up taking two girls back to their hotel room, and, of course, that winds up very uncomfortable for everyone except Bobby.
Overall, Darling doesn’t convey the obvious strangeness of the movie’s conceit, winding up with uneven performances and a leaden pace. “He Went That Way” should’ve definitely leaned heavily into bizarre territory. Poor Spanky spends most of the movie caged.
The inspiration for the movie becomes more intriguing than anything in the movie. In end credit clips, we see that there was an actual Spanky, who worked his way along the variety show circuit, specializing in “monkeys doing things that monkeys don’t typically do.” Apparently, in a post-Beatles and Kennedy assassination America, audiences are more interested in the Ed Sullivan Show than any monkey hijinks. That’s an interesting story right there that’s never established in “He Went That Way”. I would definitely like to know more about the real people that inspired this movie.
As mentioned, this is Darling’s directorial debut (he was the cinematographer on the 1988 Australian cult classic “Yahoo Serious”) and sadly it was his final film too. The director died in a 2022 surfing accident near Sydney, Australia. He didn’t live to see the movie premiere at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.
RATING: **
