Here is a frankly bizarre film, one whose sheer strangeness, added to a performance of utter detail and conviction from no less an actor than Andrew Scott, gives it a certain interest. But that didn’t prevent my jaw making sharp contact with the floor at a number of egregiously misjudged moments.
Scott plays Donald Devlin, a garbage man in a depressed US steel town: he is a lonely man with what might be borderline learning difficulties, and is separated from the mother of his 11-year-old daughter. When a local kid goes missing and is discovered drowned, Donald finds himself strangely affected, and a chance remark from the boy’s grieving mother that it might not have been an accident triggers in him an obsessive determination to find out what happened. He is, after all, in an ideal position to go through people’s trash. But plenty of folks, including the police chief, want Donald to quit sticking his nose into matters that don’t concern him.
This is a perfectly decent premise for a procedural thriller and Scott does his best to sell it. But some of the plot turns are preposterous and gibberingly ridiculous. There’s the question of why exactly the victim was buried without an autopsy, what that examination could reveal and how it might yet be achieved – which leads to something truly mind-blowing.
And then there’s the final confrontation between Donald and a certain guilty someone, which happens just after he appears to have reached a level of peace and contentment, particularly in his relationship with his daughter. Suddenly, we are in a world of hi-tech murderous violence. Uh … OK. Does cult classic status beckon?
