Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the writer/director team behind 2006’s Half Nelson, describe this richly rewarding existential gambler road movie as inspired by the 1970s spirit of films such as California Split and Five Easy Pieces, although a James Toback cameo flags up a weightier debt to The Gambler. There’s a hint of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight too as Ben Mendelsohn’s down-at-heel Gerry finds himself in the lucky-charm company of Ryan Reynolds’s charismatic Curtis, an easy-going chancer with a Sideways-glancing twinkle. Tethered by fate, the odd couple leave Iowa, heading for New Orleans in pursuit of a high-stakes game that may change both their fortunes.
Filmed in long, heady takes that accentuate both the locations and tactile interpersonal dynamics, Mississippi Grind is a poignantly seductive love story about two marooned midlifers – one a loner, the other just lost. Sienna Miller and Analeigh Tipton raise their soulmate roles above the level of mere sounding boards, and Alfre Woodard adds a touch of steel, but our focus remains fixed on the odd couple as they detour hither and yon, chasing the rainbow that year by year recedes before them. Eschewing familiar vistas, Fleck and Boden take us on a tour of boarded facades and crumbling casinos light-years away from the glamour of Vegas or Atlantic City.
Through these exhausted surroundings, cinematographer Andrij Parekh’s camera drifts in woozy fashion, the landscape a little punch-drunk, like Mendelsohn’s softly swimming head. A bluesy soundtrack drives the narrative through bars, truck stops and riverboats, amplified by a couple of “live” sets that provide Altmanesque choric accompaniment. There are plenty of early exit points in the film’s final act, but the film-makers seem desperate to stay on this road as long as possible, as unwilling to leave their characters as Gerry is to cut his losses and walk away from the table, driven onward by a strange blend of love and addiction.
