Movie Review: Before We Go

Director: Chris Evans / Starring: Chris Evans & Alice Eve/ Writer(s): Ron Bass, Jen Smolka, Chris Shafer & Paul Vicknair. 

Before We Go is a drama/romance movie about two strangers, Nick Vaughan(Evans) and Brooke Dalton(Eve), who find themselves stranded in New York for the night with only 80 bucks and two non-functional credit cards between the two of them.

The film gets straight to the point opening on a trumpet playing Nick(Evans) in the bustle of Grand Central Station on a late night. He sees Brooke(Eve) storming, seemingly hysterical, through the station down to the subway, dropping and breaking her phone on the way. He chases her down to return it to her and finds out she's stranded in the city because her purse was stolen. Being the good samaritan he is, he offers to help her get home. Brooke is distrusting of Nick at first, she even gives him a wrong name. And that's fair, he's a strange man nearly forcing kindness onto her in the middle of the night. But as if his boyish charm & his disarming kindness didn't already let you know, there's a redemptive scene where he swoops up behind Brooke out of nowhere and throws his arm around her when she's heading down the sidewalk straight for a group of rowdy young men when god knows what was about to happen. It's creepy that he followed her, but you know what they say, the devil you know...

Nick is a man with a bubbly, easygoing personality but some of it is a facade to mask the scars of a past relationship. He seems stoic about it at first, but you later learn how deep his missed opportunity at love cuts. I'll admit, having just recently seen Evans in Age of Ultron as Steve Rogers/Captain America, it's a little hard to immediately separate him from that. Doesn't help Nick has that same upright demeanor to him as Cap, but Evans sheds the Marvel role here as well as he did in Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer. Brooke is "icy" as Nick put it, distant and solemn at first. As the night goes on her personality unravels, she opens up and you learn she's had some turbulence in her love life as well, though, more recent than Nick's. 

I haven't seen much of Alice Eve, I know her from Star Trek Into Darkness, though. She's really, really good in this role. She and Evans have fervent chemistry as two characters with a deep connection whilst in a haze over the love of someone else. Towards the middle of the film I was close to writing it off as a derivative of Lost In Translation, but the last act proves this is different from that. Yes there's the dynamic of two disillusioned strangers having a chance meeting against the backdrop of a big city(New York City is affectionately lensed by 'Like Crazy' & 'In Time' cinematographer John Guleserian) but Before We Go is a story that addresses its characters' problems directly. It doesn't offer an answer, because there's never a definite answer when it comes to things like this, but presents a strong notion about what the answer may be.

"You can't allow the people you love to determine how you love." is the most important piece of dialogue in the film and it offers what might be a novel point of view to some. It's spoken to Brooke, but it applies to both characters and anyone who's ever loved someone so to the extent that it makes them question themselves. Being in love with someone even though they're happy without you, still being in love with someone despite how much they've hurt you. That depth of love may not be fathomable to a lot of people, but then again... it might just be. This isn't about just laying down and being okay with those circumstances, though. It's about accepting those things as they are so you can move on if need be. 

"You have to be okay with not being okay" Nick says and he's right. Whether that be a missed opportunity at love or the prospect thereof... Ironically what may just be the case for the two characters. Chris Evans' feature debut behind the camera handles the expansive topic of love tenderly, but doesn't come off as sappy. It's kind of distracting that Evans is in the movie himself, but it's smart that started out small and used himself as draw. It'll be interesting to see where he goes from here. I remember a while back him talking about focusing on directing more.