Paradise Highway – ABC Film Challenge – Female Directors – (G – Anna Gutto) – Paradise Highway – Movie Review
Director: Anna Gutto
Writer: Anna Gutto (Screenplay)
Cast
- Juliette Binoche (High Life)
- Frank Grillo (Black Lotus)
- Hala Finley (Hypnotic)
- Cameron Monaghan (The Giver)
- Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption)
Plot: A truck driver has been forced to smuggle illicit cargo to save her brother from a deadly prison gang. With FBI operatives hot on her trail, Sally’s conscience is challenged when the final package turns out to be a teenage girl.
Runtime: 1 Hour 55 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Paradise Highway starts when trucker Sally (Binoche) takes jobs smuggling things across the border to save her brother Dennis (Grillo) who is in prison. However, the latest package is a young girl Leila (Finley), who makes things complicated when they meet to exchange.
Sally finds herself needing to protect the young girl from human traffickers, putting herself in a race against time to stop her brother from getting harmed. Elsewhere, veteran cop Gerick (Freeman) teams up with a rookie Sterling (Monaghan) to figure out what is going on.
Verdict on Paradise Highway
Paradise Highway is a thriller following a trucker doing everything she can to keep her brother safe in prison. However, the latest task sees her needing to transport a young girl until she learns what it is for. Now she must figure out what to do to save the young girl from a horrific future.
This is a thriller that keeps us following the trucker looking to do the right thing. It shows her jaded past that could have created doubt and shows the horrifying criminal underworld operation going on. While the story is filled with twists and turns along with a veteran/rookie cop dynamic. We don’t get offered too much into the truly disturbing vision of the underworld. Everything feels safe on the surface level and by the end of the movie, it unfolds how you would expect.
Final Thoughts – Paradise Highway is a safe-by-the-books thriller.