Mean Dreams

Greetings again from the darkness. It was one month to the day since the shocking news that Bill Paxton had died when I sat down to watch one of his final two movies (the other being The Circle, which hits theatres in a few weeks). His searing performance in this low-budget drama made me realize just what a gaping hole he leaves in the film world … and how fitting that his character is the antithesis of Paxton's real world nice guy persona.

Director Nathan Morlando opens with a shot of a peaceful stroll through rural prairie land, providing no indication of the quietly intense misery that is coming. Jonas (Josh Wiggins) is a teenage boy working daily on the family ranch when he meets Casey (Sophie Nelisse), the new girl in town. The two quickly hit it off, and connect in a way neither has before. Jonas soon realizes that Casey's cop dad (Paxton) abuses her, and spontaneously can shift between country charm and frightening intimidator.

Writers Kevin Coughlan and Ryan Grassby do a nice job of using minimal dialogue and subtle interactions to round out these characters. Paxton plays a corrupt cop who is an alcoholic and abusive dad, and a man overly protective of his daughter and distrusting of outsiders. Casey is played by Sophie Nelisse, who was so good in The Book Thief (2013). She is a smart girl who fears not just her father, but also a life that may prevent her from ever seeing the ocean. Josh Wiggins plays Jonas as a strong-willed young man who believes people should do the right thing, especially for their loved ones. Wiggins made a terrific film debut in 2014's Hellion.

There is a lot going in this little independent feature. It's a coming of age story, and a reminder of the anxiousness of youth and the power of first love. It's also a disturbing story of a rotten-to-the-core man who has lost his way (if he ever had it). Lastly, it's a chase movie that features a blend of beautiful and harsh scenery – filmed mostly in Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario. There is a tremendously tense sequence shot with the limited perspective offered by the covered bed of a pickup truck; and it's a contrast between two youths trying to escape their situation, and two bad cops with little redeeming value. Maybe we've seen similar type movies, but never one with two excellent young actors and a menacing performance from the late great Bill Paxton.

Bill Paxton is menacingly great. The two leads have good chemistry and their love felt pure and authentic. Paxton's daughter sharing her painful and violent family history, and her boyfriend's reaction to hearing it felt raw and I connected to it. The movie's scenery is so relaxing and beautiful. Even the on-the-run parts were fine, until the rushed, disjointed, predictable final 36 minutes... I wish they had cut out some of the drama and ended the movie with the lovebirds on the bus riding into a new and unknown future.

The American-Canadian thriller "Mean Dreams" (R, 1:48) is one of two posthumous film releases for Bill Paxton (in addition to 2017's "The Circle", in which he has a small role). When Paxton died suddenly of complications from heart surgery at the age of 61 early in 2017, celebrity expressions of sorrow struck one consistent chord, well represented by Arnold Schwarzenegger's tweet that Paxton "could play any role, but he was best at being Bill – a great human being with a huge heart." In Paxton's most famous roles, he was an ordinary, basically decent guy caught up in extraordinary circumstances (as he was in "Apollo 13", "Twister", "Titanic" and "U-571"). He was also very good at playing tough and/or morally ambiguous characters (as he did in "Aliens", "A Simple Plan", "Edge of Tomorrow" and his award-winning HBO series "Big Love"), and some of his best work was as a basically bad person (as in "Weird Science", "True Lies", "Frailty" (which he also directed) and "Training Day", the TV series he was acting in when he died). "Mean Dreams" is another great example of Paxton playing against his true personality.

In this film, Paxton plays Wayne Caraway, a rural Michigan police officer and single dad, who is pretty bad at both roles – and a pretty bad person in general. When local boy Jonas Ford (Josh Wiggins, the star of 2015's "Max") starts seeing Wayne's teenage daughter, Casey (Sophie Nélisse, who played the title role in 2013's "The Book Thief"), Wayne is pretty… mean about shattering Jonas' dreams of getting closer to Casey. Mostly it's because Jonas isn't shy about trying to protect Casey from Wayne's abuse, and because Wayne doesn't want Jonas nosing around and discovering any of his other... activities.

After Jonas fails to get his father (Joe Cobden) or Wayne's boss (Colm Feore) to intervene on Casey's behalf, he takes matters into his own hands. When he witnesses an example of just how bad a man that Wayne is, Jonas steals some money, grabs Casey and hits the road. Of course, Wayne comes after his daughter – with a (literal) vengeance. As Jonas and Casey struggle to get away from Casey's dad for good, they confront the harsh realities of life on the run (especially as it pertains to two teenagers in the middle of nowhere), break some laws and put their safety and the safety of others at risk along the way.

"Mean Dreams" is a small, but entertaining coming-of-age movie. The two teen protagonists aren't quite Bonnie and Clyde, but their saga is engaging and their love story is affecting. Nélisse and Wiggins are two rising young stars whose emerging talents shine through in sympathetic roles and Paxton does his usual expert work as one really bad dude. The script (by Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby) and the direction (by Nathan Morlando) keep the action and dialog both unusually grounded and fairly unpredictable, especially for this kind of film. The score and the cinematography (filmed creatively and beautifully in northern Ontario and Sault Ste. Marie) are also very good, especially for a movie made on a small budget. The film is a bit lacking in gravitas, but it's worth a look – to see Paxton in his last major role – and for the overall quality of the film itself. "B+"

On the whole, this is a very good movie all round. The four main cast members are superb, and the story is heavily character-driven, with no ridiculous stunts and special effects present to drown the characters out at any stage.

The lean score and graceful cinematography allow the story to be told at an ideal pace, and aren't used to lift the intensity as one would expect with this genre because the story is good enough to take care of this on its own. I never felt as if things were dragging or being rushed, and things were largely unpredictable aside from the ending, which was satisfying nonetheless.

For a good vs bad theme, the story favors neither side over the other in terms of skill and resources. So often the bad guys are made to look like fools but this isn't the case here, which I found to be quite refreshing. The teen romance side of things is handled better than almost any other examples I've seen. There aren't any cringe-worthy moments at all.

In all, Mean Dreams was much better than I expected, and well worth the time I spent watching it. If you're after a low budget thriller which is well made, character-driven, and intelligently written, you could settle for much worse than this one.

As far I know, there's a thin difference between Canadian films and the US. Just like the Hong Kong's Cantonese and the Chinese Mandarin films are. They exchange starts and crews, but most of the Canadian film I've seen were French language. Those English films are not as popular as the Hollywood's on the world stage. Lots of good films go unnoticed like the recent film 'The Confirmation' I reviewed a few months ago. If this same film were made in Hollywood, would have been considered an average. But for the Canadian standards, I mean they usually won't make the big budget fancy films, hence it is so much better.

This is a coming-of-age thriller drama. Revolves around two teenagers as they run away with a bag full of cash from their parents. It all begins with a girl, who arrive in a small town with her father. Soon she makes a friend with her neighbour boy. His parents are neglect kind when it comes to him, and her father is an alcoholic, abuser, as well as a dirty cop. One day her father comes standing between them, that's the opportunity they were looking for to run away, since being with their parents has not been any good. But her father is not in the mood to let them go as his money was involved. So the running and chasing game begins.

You might say, you have seen this story in all the similar themed films, no matter its Hollywood, European or the Korean. That's what I thought too, but still it is a very good film. I'm not expecting it to impress you as well. If it does, then that's great. But it all depends on your taste in films, quantity of films you watch regularly and most importantly your expectation from it. It was like another 'Cop Car', but there's no car involved in the core of the plot. It's all about the money and the mad-cop father. It looked kind of western style, or the tale that very much suitable for the humid California settings.

❝It's no ocean, but it's ours.❞

In this, it was always cloudy, wet and chilling moisture atmosphere where all the chase takes place. The great locations that avoids to get in any major town/city. Other than 3-4 main cast, there's no one else. Because most of the scenes are between the boy and the girl and sometimes her cop father in isolated places. There's a dog in the film, but not focused enough to classify it as a dog film from one of the angles. The pace of the narration was so fast with not too long or very short overall runtime. It had many twists and turns, yet definitely you would predict most of them.

Nice performances, by both the youngsters. As usual Bill Paxton nailed it in his negative role. It was one of his final films before his death early this year. It was a small appearance, but a prominent role that I surely would remember it for him. I was not anticipating anything extraordinary. But when I learnt about its synopsis, I thought I understood everything about the story there itself. Though watching it in the film was a different experience and one of the reason was, it is a different cast and atmospheric setting.

I felt they should have improvised in some of the parts, but at the end I'm satisfied being what it is. Especially in the initial stage, the intro was so simple and skips fast to the next stage. I did not fully understand any of the characters about their earlier life events to the point where this story commenced. But going forward, I started to have an idea, seeing how the tale has progressed. That really helped to come to the point directly.

There are no smart scenes like the film characters to take measures to counter the threats in a fancy way. That's done mainly to impress the viewers. This screenplay tried to be realistic as much as possible, but there's a couple of scenes that could only work in cinematic. I think that's sometimes necessary for a film. After all it is a film and made for entertainment purpose, not a documentary feature. But overall film was much better with enough tense moments and interesting developments. Lots of good films released in the last 12 months and this is not one of them, but considering it is from Canada, surely it is. Because I've already given the reason for that in the very first paragraph. So thumbs up for it from my side.

7/10