Carolina Caroline

Grade: B+

It was only after my viewing of Carolina Caroline that I learned director Adam Rehmeier also did Snack Shack, my favorite movie of 2024. This, of course, prompted me to think on both movies, and see if I could draw any parallels. The only connection I can make between Snack Shack and Carolina Caroline is both films take a formula that’s been done many times before, and give it much more life than I ever could have anticipated. Otherwise, the fact that they are such different beasts, yet come from the same director, is a testament to Rehmeier’s ability. He doesn’t stick to the same old thing. I can’t wait to see what he does right after this, and beyond.

Carolina Caroline is a Bonnie and Clyde/Natural Born Killers type of story about a couple who travels around causing mayhem. It has a warm, pensive, lived-in indie feel. It will be on streaming platforms soon enough, but if you’re able to see it in a theater before it goes away, you will get more than what you would get on your own device at home. This is a stacked soundtrack. It must be a very long album. If you don’t normally enjoy country, this might make you a fan. The sound system at the cinema is better than yours. Every last pedal steel twang, honky tonk piano fill, and drop D chord is thoroughly felt. The highlight for me was a beautiful cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “My Father’s House,” performed by a female artist. I didn’t see it on the film’s Spotify playlist, but the way it’s used is absolutely appropriate.

It begins with an oft-used plot device called “in media res” – Latin for “in the midst of things.” That’s where you have an opening scene that takes place at the end, or after most of the action, then we cut back to earlier, and spend the whole runtime finding out how they arrived there. The real beginning is when Oliver stops at a filling station. Caroline, an employee, spots Oliver conning the cashier by asking for change, and ending up with more than he should. It’s not that much, but it adds up the more you do it. Rather than tell on him, Caroline agrees to go on a date with Oliver, to one of those movie bars that provides the cinematographer and sound designer an opportunity to flex. It does look and sound really good.

You can anticipate almost every beat as it follows the template. There’s a montage of Oliver coaching Caroline on how to cheat, distract, and pick pockets. It isn’t the most profound dialogue in the world, with lines like “are we good people pretending to be bad, or bad people pretending to be good?” They go around robbing banks because…I’m not sure. Best I can come up with is they do these robberies so they can save up and leave the country, dodging the consequences of doing all these robberies. Also, it’s a movie. It’s a MacGuffin.

Rehmeier’s skillful treatment of the unoriginal material is what gives Carolina Caroline as much meaning as it does, not to mention the cast he has put together. They sell the hell out of it with their chemistry. As Caroline, Australian actress Samara Weaving is a master of dialects. I previously enjoyed her, and her various accents, earlier this year in Over Your Dead Body and Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. Here, she is southern. As Oliver, Kyle Gallner (Strange Darling, Smile) gives us the most charming, smooth just-passing-through drifter since Sean Penn in Oliver Stone’s U Turn. The two of them look great and are electrifying together.

Jon Gries (Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite) is effective as Caroline’s father. I’ll leave you to discover how Kyra Sedgwick plays into it, but it’s one of my favorite performances of the year. I can’t escape Atlanta actors. I didn’t know my friend Robert Wayne was in this until I saw him. He’s the guy on the train, who is pickpocketed and later fooled into thinking he’s talking to his bank. He is the fifth person billed in the end credits, after Weaving, Gallner, Sedgwick, and Gries.

Gallner’s last scene is the most unpredictable moment in a movie that doesn’t have many. It’s unexpected not only because of what happens, but why he does what he does. It’s a fearless, noble, touching, and poignant act. Because the movie is often so formulaic and rote (scene, montage, song, scene, song), I wasn’t sure where I was going to land with this – but by the end, I was pretty well won over. There are many ways it might not have worked, but it’s outweighed by enough down-home charm to keep it afloat.

Grade: B+