“Barron’s Cove” is a pulpy thriller awkwardly tied to a soapy story of bad dads and the wreckage they leave behind.
Thrillers often minimize backstory and exposition to maintain the tension (and keep us from noticing plot holes or questionable motivations), but this film slows down for three major actor showcase scenes to explore the toxic masculinity of the characters’ fathers. While there is a sole writer/director (Evan Ari Kelman), the list of almost 30 producers may be a clue to the film’s uncertain shifts in tone.
When a boy named Barron is killed by a train, a corrupt police chief (Marc Menchaca) quickly closes the case, announcing that the 5th grader tied himself to the railroad tracks to commit suicide. The boy’s father refuses to believe it, so he kidnaps a classmate who was there to find out what happened, perhaps also to get revenge.
The father is Caleb (Garrett Hedlund), who works for his uncle Benji (Stephen Lang). We learn early on that Caleb and his uncle are in a rough business and are willing to bend some rules and hurt some people to get what they want.
Benji tells Caleb to visit a customer who bought from a competitor and deliver a message that this behavior is unacceptable in the most direct way possible. At first, Caleb asks to have someone else do it because he has to pick up Barron from school, but Benji insists. The next day, Caleb’s knuckles are bloody. His ex-wife (Brittany Snow) did not get the message that she would have to pick Barron up, and no one has seen the boy since the day before.
Two of Barron’s classmates were with him at the train tracks. One was Ethan (Christian Convery), the golden-haired son of a very smooth aspiring politician (Hamish Linklater as Lyle). Benji and Lyle are connected to each other and to the local police chief, and all three want the investigation into Barron’s death shut down. The file is quickly closed. But a new detective on staff named Navarro (Raúl Castillo) continues to ask questions.
Caleb, almost mad with grief and guilt, kidnaps Ethan and takes him to a lake house. Then things get twisty, complicated, and very violent. Also, as noted, soapy.
Hedlund is an exceptionally talented performer. He conveys a lot with his physicality, the way he moves, the set of his shoulders. But his character here is too often limited to meaningful looks from under his shaggy bangs, eyes sometimes glaring, sometimes haunted. Lang is at his Lang-iest, which is just what the Benji role requires. In a diner scene where Benji and Lyle try to out-tough each other, Lang is impressively steely.
As he did in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” “Severance’s” Tramell Tillman arrives midway through the story to just about steal the film, as Caleb’s old army buddy, in a performance with engaging natural warmth that reminds us how stagey the rest of the script is. Cinematography by “Wonder Woman”’s Matthew Jensen is evocatively moody, though a visually striking scene of characters silhouetted in front of a glowing blue aquarium tank is emotionally and dramatically thin. The film wants to explore themes of violence, generational trauma, grief, and the possibility of redemption. Instead, it just presents them.
