Here’s that rare thing: an adaptation of a Daniel Woodrell novel that doesn’t live up to the source material. Woodrell’s work, focused almost exclusively on the challenges of working-class life in the mountainous American Ozarks, has previously provided the source material for two fine films: Ang Lee’s historical drama Ride With The Devil and the Oscar-nominated Winter’s Bone. But Tomato Red (adapted from the 1998 novel of the same name) to do justice to Woodrell’s austere vision. Jake Weary stars as Sammy Barlach, an ex-con who spends his time drifting through various dead-end jobs and drinking himself into a stupor. His life is altered dramatically when, while on a bender, he encounters the free-spirited Jamalee (Julia Garner), whose striking crimson hair give the book and the film its title, and her gigolo brother Jason. He falls in with them and their jaded mother (Anna Friel, playing distinctively against type), and he’s soon drawn into a world of long cons and deals gone bad. Tomato Red is admittedly lovely to look at; Irish director Juanita WIlson captures truck stops and trailer parks in all their elegant, rust-ridden decay. But its depiction of hardscrabble southern life is sepia-tinged and shallow. Cliches are eagerly delivered - witness Barlach’s portentous voiceover croaking hackneyed lines like “Heroes have a knack of knowing the right thing to do” - and the series of scrapes and hijinks the group get into sometimes comes off as playing dress-up as poor people. Ultimately it’s a case of all surface, no feeling.
