Film Review: Adopt A Highway

In Logan Marshall-Green’s affecting directorial debut, Adopt A Highway, Ethan Hawke plays Russ. He has spent the last 21 years of his life in prison, a sentence he received because it was his third strike, for the possession of an ounce of marijuana. Because of the time that has passed, Russ feels incredibly placed in the modern age. He has no cell phone, no email address, he has little understanding of what the internet is and how it works. A devastating early scene shows him looking up his father online, only to learn that he passed away many years back. Now he works as a dishwasher at a burger joint.

But things soon get very complicated. One night, after his manager left, he is tasked to take out the trash, and close up shop. As he takes out the trash, he hears something in the wind. Cries of a baby. He soon finds a helpless little baby girl inside the dumpster, and a napkin inside a bag that she was placed in reading “Her name was Ella.” Despite still being on parole, he takes the baby in, soon finding himself both comically and endearingly overwhelmed by the responsibilities that come taking care of a child.

There is more to the story that comes in around the second half, but that is best experienced as you watch it. It’s not a very plot heavy movie, at times feeling more like a series of rambling vignettes where Russ tries to navigate the very difficult choices that he has to make as someone who has just got out of prison, and facing many challenges that are born out of his own choices and those that are placed on him by a flawed system that does not help the needs of people like him as much as they think.

Logan Marshall-Green wrote and directed this, and in many ways, it does have the standard trappings of a first-time director, especially coming from an actor – heavy themes, a character study, and a narrative that is given a deliberately loose structure that sacrifices urgency for breathing room for the actors to do what they do. I’m not even saying that in a bad way, it’s simply a pattern; not unlike Alex Wolff’s film, The Cat and the Moon, from last week.

In fact, the aimless narrative thrust in Adopt A Highway is a perfect representation of Russ’ state-of-mind. He is a man out of time, he tries to do his best with what little he has, he has trouble connecting with the people around him, and he is constantly struggling to find his footing in his newfound life out of prison. Hawke has always been a brilliant actor, and his work here is a wonderful showcase of his ability to create a fully embody the kind of shaggy but kind-hearted man who is trying to find his way. Other actors are also great in smaller roles like Elaine Hendrix and Betty Gabriel, but it is Hawke’s film through and through.

Adopt A Highway keeps its ambitions in check, and Logan Marshall-Green smartly sticks the focus on character, first and foremost. Of course, having an actor as great as Ethan Hawke take the center stage certainly helps, but the material on the page, while fairly unassuming and straightforward on the surface, brings up subtle complexities as it holds a mirror to the way our systems treat people who are in need. It’s a small and modest film, but it’s also an incredibly thoughtful and soulful experience that will find a way to penetrate the hearts of anyone who sees it.