Paradise Highway (2022)

(On Cable TV, December 2022) How can such an interesting premise lead to something so dull? In Paradise Highway, Juliette Binoche plays a world-weary veteran trucker who gets mixed up in a sordid human trafficking ring. Much of the film takes place in dimly lit truck stops, open highways and run-down remnants of American infrastructure. Morgan Freeman plays a weary FBI agent without much energy, while Frank Grillo briefly shows up as well. It’s all shot in gritty, dirty, near-incidental style (except for the glamour shots reserved for the trucks driving down the highway). There are a few things that work, or at least deliver more than the strict minimum—the insider’s look at the life of a professional trucker, for instance, or the underbelly of criminality taking minors across state lines. But while writer-director Anna Gutto may have started with the best of intentions, the result at the end of the process feels like a dull underpowered uninteresting third-rate thriller. There’s little energy to Paradise Highway, almost no action whatsoever and (predictably) little humour to make it interesting. Some effort to build character and sympathy for the victim is admirable but ultimately wasted in a film that doesn’t have what it takes, either for a serious drama or for an exploitation thrill ride.