Anchorage follows two brothers, Jacob (Scott Monahan, director) and John (Dakota Loesch, screenwriter), as they travel from Florida to Anchorage, Alaska to sell the hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of pills in their trunk. Along the road, with nobody around but themselves, old pain runs close to the surface and threatens their journey in ways they did not plan for.
★★★★✰
The movie montage has long been an unwelcome crutch, used to pad a run time and show something with speed rather than nuance. They can sometimes work to show a plan coming together that would take too long to spell out, but most of the time they are annoying and contribute very little. Anchorage’s montage, which takes place early on in the film, risks sacrificing the intriguing characters that have been set up in Jacob and John; but Anchorage is smart enough to avoid falling into that trap. Anchorage’s early montage captures the singular brilliance of its two leads, and crackles with the youthful, anarchic energy that elevates this beyond a simple two-hander. The men behave like teenagers: doing bumps, smoking, and rolling around in the dirt. But, between these moments of adolescent bliss, director Monahan keeps his camera close to the two, turning moments of fun into unresolved volatility that, set against the vacant desert, traps the two men in their implicit battle for authority. Anchorage’s early moments signal the dissection of brotherhood and grief that is to come, with a frightful proximity that unsettles in the same breath as it captivates.
Their deftly realised dynamic sprawls into the great American nothingness, painted only by the beat-up car Jacob and John ride in. As they drive, their similarities and differences bubble to the surface. The more intense their relationship grows, and the more their personalities clash, the more dangerous their trip to freedom and riches becomes.
In no uncertain terms, Anchorage is a gem. It buries its pathos under layers of brotherly fronting, disputes and anger. Its success is mainly down to the two leads, whose chemistry provides the beating heart of the film. Monaham and Loesch bounce off each other with ease and portray their connection as an equal balance of understanding and misunderstanding. They banter, bicker and occasionally grow violent. Their dynamic is lived in and raw, understood primarily through their interactions rather than words. The two are childish but not dumb, a hard balance to strike that these two find perfectly. They give attitude, whilst also keeping their shared grief close enough to the surface that it cannot be ignored. Monahan imbues mournfulness and indecision, whilst Loesch maintains an older-brother distance that allows him to lecture his brother. Both performances ebb and flow along with their bond and, whilst not perfect, easily deliver a relationship that feels all too real.
As a director, Monahan keeps his camera tactile and remote, following over the characters’ shoulders and providing a backseat view of events. A sense of claustrophobia is consistent, with both the enclosed space and the intrusive camera never giving the two brothers a break from each other. The camera direction isolates both men within the sprawling desert, remembering to look up once in a while to remind you that not only are they trapped with each other, they are alone. They move awkwardly around the frame, and Anchorage keeps them from escaping the rising tension. Long takes show moments of banal humanness, allowing both men’s facades to break and expose their flaws. The direction shows them as people, not the cliché drug addicts that other movies would.
This tension comes through further via Loesch’s screenplay, which similarly finds both Jacob and John’s pressure points whilst also allowing them to say nothing particularly interesting. Jacob’s anger sometimes clouds his judgement, and John never misses an opportunity to remind him that he actually enjoys the violence. They waste time in the car, they make unnecessary stops that add nothing to their end goal. Most screenplays would worry about these scenes slowing down the pace, but Loesch knows that Anchorage’s strength lies in its rejection of a road movie’s expected beats; the men do not stop in a diner for coffee, they do not take hitchhikers along the way. The dialogue is sharp, characters cut across one another and squabble because of it. Anchorage does not care about setting a steady pace with its plot; it knows that its characters are strong enough to do the driving.
In the few moments Anchorage allows other characters to pierce the bubble of Jacob and John, it loses sight of the two men and distances them. A large part of Anchorage works because nothing interferes with its ecosystem. When things do it disrupts the tension and feels manufactured for the sake of having another face on screen to create conflict. If Anchorage had had the confidence to just show Jacob and John, it would have maintained its pressure cooker tone. The occasional interludes of supporting characters are not a huge issue, but they do force a division between Jacob and John when overlapping them always provides intrigue.
Anchorage keeps its ending between the two, refusing to go big or dramatic. A notable one-take shot out of a car door blocks off a violent moment, the absence of a visual making it feel all the more visceral. The ending balances violence and regret, remembering to show the aftermath of the event as just as important as the act itself. Anchorage exists in the aftermath of grief, and its ending delivers a sense of inevitability that still manages to shatter the heart of its viewer in spite of Jacob and John’s often annoying natures.
The Verdict
Anchorage is a road movie that knows why road movies work, keeping both the drama and mundanity contained in the car. Whilst there are moments of forced stakes when other characters enter, the bond between Jacob and John feels incredibly well realised for a ninety minute run. Towards the end, Jacob changes shirts, but struggles to put it on and sees it is inside out. No other film would write this small detail in, but it enriches Jacob as a character and cements Anchorage as a painfully human film.
Words by James Evenden
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