I have enjoyed a great deal of neo-noir, and most such films are at least partly staged in the desert. The entirety of 2015’s The Frontier rarely loses sight of the titular diner and conjoined motel, which is in an area so desolate there are no other proximate structures. It’s a good place to have a handful of dubious characters nervously circle each other and beat around so many tumbleweeds—I mean, bushes.
Too bad I didn’t believe one second of this film. Let’s start with the name of this old diner and three-room inn. No such place would have such a rather pretentious name. The Frontier is what you name a college town eatery that seems to find new and unappetizing ways to work avocado into everything. But the place this movie takes place in is an eatery patronized by only a half-dozen regulars and the truly desperate who are just passing through. As our lead says to the server: “Nice place you got”, and the response is, “You’re kidding, right?”
That patron is Jocelin Donahue. Proprietor Kelly Lynch found her sleeping in a car in the parking lot. Donahue has obviously done something very bad, given the huge money clip she discards in the diner bathroom, after removing the thick wad of money from it. An engraving on the clip establishes a connection with Standard Oil. And isn’t the news reporting some wealthy scion of that company’s founder just died brutally in Flagstaff? Hmmm…
Noticing bruises around Donahue’s neck, Lynch buys a story of an abuse boyfriend. In sympathy, she offers the young woman a job, as if the little traffic we see this eatery get warrants any additional help.
A suited Jim Beaver is incredibly angry about this development, which seems odd, as he initially appears to be only a customer. Might he instead be part of some conspiracy he’s involved in? And what about that mysterious couple played by Izabella Miko and Jamie Harris—might they be part of it, too? Eventually, a surly 20-something hoodlum played by Liam Aiken starts hanging around there and I would be shocked if he wasn’t up to something criminal.
Hovering around the margins is the local sheriff, played by A.J. Bowen. He seems at first to be the movie’s one character above suspicion, until he reacts poorly to her rejection of his invite to a hook-up, and flattens one of her tires with his knife.
There are many problems, big and small, with this film. Let’s start with that flat tire. Earlier, he had fixed that same tire for her when it was flat. Donahue is quickly revealed to be a resourceful and cautious criminal, who plans everything she does to a ridiculous extent. And yet she fails to notice over the course of a day and a night the best means of her to escape has been incapacitated. I refuse to believe this character would not check this until she is unable to get away, especially as the tire went flat before.
There is another moment, however small, that annoyed me. Donahue sets fire to some incriminating papers in the metal trash can in her room. Lynch talks in right when she does that, but doesn’t seem to notice anything burning.
It may seem like I am nitpicking this picture, but those are concrete examples I can detail. The bigger problem overall is with the performances, and those are more difficult to analyze.
There is a spectrum of acting ability on display, from almost perfect down to completely unacceptable. Lynch fares the best here, until she is given free range to chew the scenery in the third act. Donahue’s scheming character is interesting, though not as much the film appears to think she is. It requires a method of acting that could either convey a methodical mind always at work or somebody trying to appear to be more clever than they really are. Beaver is intimidating, but it is a one-note performance. Similarly, Aiken isn’t a real person, so much as a stock character automatically dropped in by a screenwriting program. Bowen, as the sheriff, has more nuances than many others here, but I wasn’t sold on his character’s turn-on-a-dime personality shifts. Harris is wryly amusing, but feels like he was dropped in from a different movie. Which leaves Miko, who turns in an execrable performance which might not be worthy of even community theatre.
And community theatre is a fair analogy for this entire production. Even if it wasn’t predominately set in one location, it would still feel like an airless stage play. None of the performances improve upon the staginess of it.
Not that there is an absence of good dialogue in The Frontier, but even the best lines consistently ring false. Harris has probably the single best line, which is “Hell hath no fury like a woman bored.” Alas, this is a character I would have liked to have seen in a different film. Another character towards the end has the best line reading, in reaction to another’s odd consolation towards them in their moment of dying: “Is that from one of your movies?! Goddamn…”
And so, I now have a new candidate for what I hope will not be my last words: “Is that from The Frontier?! Goddamn…”
Dir: Oren Shai
Starring Jocelin Donahue, Kelly Lynch, Jim Beaver
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray