LaRoy, Texas (2024) Shane Atkinson’s debut feature is a slow burning gem
“People only see what we let them”
My Brother Andy (who isn’t my brother but for historical accuracy, is called Andy) recommended this quirky comedy gem to me many, many late nights of film watching ago and finally on a Friday night entering into a Wes Anderson Saturday morning I settled into Shane Atkinson’s directorial debut and as a fan of movies from first time filmmakers I was mightily impressed. And why not? For you have a man in the middle of a Coen Brothers mess not of his making deeply in love with the local beauty queen who happens to need both cash and the sexual attention of her husband’s brother and if that wasn’t twisted enough, you also have a cartoonish private investigator believing in his own legend as a simple blood contract goes horribly awry as someone has someone else’s money in a sleepy town now with a rising death count and all sorts of shenanigans happening at the used car lot oh, and a laconic, quietly spoken hitman whose cold, dead eyes are perfectly summarised with “it’s important to finish things once we start them”.
Here are the opening 11 minutes:
Simple opening credits against a mainly black background are accompanied by the faint sounds of birds and insects as (according to the only internet citation I can find) “Show Off” by The Fogarty’s begins and we cut to a car speeding along a single track road in the dead of night. From inside the car we now cut quickly back and forth between the radio and the lone driver as he now passes a broken down truck on the side of the road and further on down the same road, we see a lone man walking in the dark who turning and seeing the car approaching, steps into the middle of the road, forcing the car to stop. Peering into the car we cut from a worried driver to the stranded man explaining his truck has broken down and after requesting a lift from the driver, and after some considerable thought, the driver replies coldly “Sure. I can do that”. From a camera situated in the back of the car we move simply between the driver and this stranger in the night as they each take turns in an awkward conversational exchange with first the driver and “Bad place to break down” to the stranger’s cold reply that he didn’t think he was going to stop the car and help him as he can’t be too careful these days and at this time of night and that he could be a “deranged maniac”. Awkward stares are shared between the two men until the stranger announces, with a smile, “I’m only messing with you buddy!”, but now, and with a change of camera angle from the director to two shots over each man’s shoulder, the driver turns the tables on the unwanted late night guest in his car. “Maybe I’m the dangerous one” he begins, before reeling off a stream of reasons why he wanted this stranger in his car all along and that he planned for this to happen by tampering with his car and driving along at this exact and pre-planned time. “Maybe someone paid me to kill you” he continues, an ex-wife perhaps or the mother of his children who wants to cut off his custody and it’s far cheaper to hire him than to hire a lawyer. The stranger, seriously pissed off at the conversation he started and which has now turned a deadly shade of sinister exclaims “You need to stop the fucking car”. The driver laughs.
We cut to an early morning sunrise and a stationary car at the side of the road as a man is seen digging a hole nearby as his mobile telephone begins to ring. He utters two words:
“Where’s LaRoy?”.
The sounds of an acoustic guitar accompany “LaRoy, Texas” in a pale yellow font against a black background and quickly, several shots of a dust filled, sleepy town that has clearly seen better and more prosperous days. There’s a county store, a cinema perhaps, maybe an old bookstore and several factory outlets, all closed, abandoned or derelict, and from these images we cut to a car arriving at a somewhat remote roadside diner and entering we find “Ray” (John Magaro) looking for the person who forwarded him the following written, cryptic note:
“L ve Jeans — Country Gate, 1pm”
Scanning the restaurant, someone Ray clearly doesn’t recognise calls out his name and he tentatively approaches “Skip” (Steve Zahn). Although Ray doesn’t know Skip, the soon to be boastful “private detective” knows Ray or at least his older brother, but Ray remains coldly distant and befuddled as to why he’s received this strangely cryptic note from a man he barely knows. An awkward conversation ensues between a disinterested Ray and the excitable man on the other side of the table describing how his recent work led to a “stakeout” of the town’s seedy motel renowned for sex workers and cheating partners seeking a cheap “rendezvous”. Still confused, Ray asks what this has to do with him and Skip passes him a small folder and “I saw something you might find interesting”.
Inside the folder are photos of Ray’s wife entering the motel…
Your two stars of this Coen Brothers inspired tale of a simple transaction going horribly and highly amusingly awry are introduced in the final paragraph above with John Magaro (brilliant in this year’s September 5) at his wits end with nothing left to lose except for everything, and Steve Zahn (forever a very pleasing screen presence) excellent as the over the top and out of his depth private detective on the trail of someone, anyone for that matter, and of course, a briefcase full of someone else’s money. As alluded to within my opening paragraph you also have a desperate beauty queen, a cheating and overbearing brother, double dealing at a car lot and a professional hitman, but I’ll leave both any further character explanation or indeed the actors and actresses playing these roles absent in the hope you’ll take a strange and surreal trip to LaRoy, Texas and admire a quite brilliant debut film from American filmmaker Shane Atkinson.
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon